>4^* . V 



I 



ADDRESSES 



DELIVERED 



ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS 



BY 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON BULLOCK. 



WITH A MEMOIE 



By GEORGE F. HOAR. 






y7 



a6^ 



BOSTON: 
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 

1883. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, 
By a. G. Bullock, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



University Press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, 



CONTENTS. 



SPEECH AT A WAR MEETING, page 

To aid and encourage the Formation of the Third Worcester 

County Regiment, at Mechanics' Hall, Oct. 14, 1861 . . . 1 

MASSACHUSETTS AND THE WAR TAX. 

Address in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, April 10, 

1862 9 

ADDRESS 
Before the Alumni, at Amherst College, July 8, 1863 30 

REMARKS 
On the Occasion of the Reception of the Twenty-first Massachu- 
setts Regiment by the Citizens of Worcester, Feb. 3, 1864 . . 40 

RELATIONS OF THE EDUCATED MAN WITH AMERICAN 
NATIONALITY. 

Address before the Literary Societies of Williams College, Aug. 1, 

1864 45 

SPEECH 
Before the Republican State Convention at Worcester, Sept. 15, 

1864 66 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

A Eulogy before the City Comicil and Citizens of Worcester, 

June 1, 1865 76 



Vi " CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

A COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS 

Delivered at Royalston, Mass., Aug. 23, 1865, at the Hundredth 

Anniversary of the incorporation of the Town 108 

ADDRESS 
Delivered before the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Associa- 
tion at Tremont Temple, Boston, Oct. 4, 1865 131 

SPEECH 
At a Mass Meeting in Mechanics' Hall, in Worcester, Feb. 10, 
1866, called to consider what action shall be taken by the City 
of Worcester to commemorate the service of Citizens who lost 
their lives in the War for the Union . . 151 

SPEECH 
At a Meeting of Alumni of Amherst College, July 12, 1866, at 

Amherst 156 

FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 
Delivered at Springfield, Mass., 1867 162 

ADDRESS 

Before the Worcester Agricultural Society, Sept. 17, 1868, at the 
presentation of Resolutions in memory of the late Levi Lin- 
coln, ex-Governor of the Cormnonwealth, and for many years 
President of this Society 176 

ADDRESS 
Before the Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial Science, 

Nov. 11, 1868 187 

SPEECH 
At a Dinner given to General Dix, United States Minister to 

France, by Americans at Paris, in 1869 195 

DEDICATION OF THE SOLDIERS' MONUMENT 
At Worcester, July 15, 1874 202 



CONTENTS. VU 



PAGE 

INTELLECTUAL LEADERSHIP IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 

An Address delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at 

Brown University, Providence, June 15, 1875 222 



ADDRESS 
Delivered at Music Hall, Boston, Feb. 8, 1876, on the Character 

of Dr. Samuel G. Howe 248 

THE CENTENNIAL SITUATION OF WOMAN. 

Address at the Commencement Anniversary of Mount Holyoke 

Seminary, Massachusetts, June 22, 1876 258 

ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 

Address at the Unveiling of the Statue in New York, Nov. 20, 1880 287 

CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 

Prepared at the request of the President of the American Antiqua- 
rian Society, and read at the Semi-annual Meeting of the 
Society, in Boston, April 27, 1881 298 

JAMES A. GARFIELD. 
Memorial Observances in the City of Worcester, Sept. 26, I88I . 344 

INDEX 351 



MEMOIR 



OP 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON BULLOCK. 



The subject of this memoir, like many other of 
the eminent men of Massachusetts, never held any 
national office, and never was a candidate for any. 
The result of his life must be seen in the history of 
his native State, of the populous and wealthy com- 
munity where his life was spent, and in the speeches 
contained in this volume, and many others of equal 
excellence. Yet he had a high reputation through- 
out the country. He was, at the time of his death, 
justly regarded as one of the most brilliant orators 
in America, and the subjects with which he dealt in 
his public addresses are of permanent and national 
importance and interest. 

Alexander Hamilton Bullock was born in Roy- 
alston, Worcester County, Massachusetts, March 2, 
1816. He was the son of Rufus Bullock and Sarah 
(Davis) Bullock. Rufus Bullock was born in Roy- 
alston, September 23, 1779, fourteen years after the 
incorporation of the town, was a school teacher in his 
youth, afterward a country merchant, until, in 1825, 
he engaged in manufacturing, by which he acquired 
a large and solid fortune. He represented Royalston 



X MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

for five years in the Massachusetts House of Repre- 
sentatives; was twice Senator for Worcester County; 
was a member of the conventions for revising the 
Constitution in 1820 and 1853 ; was Presidential 
Elector in 1852 on the Whig ticket ; w^as a Trustee 
of Amherst College, to which he presented a fine 
telescope ; and left liberal bequests to three religious 
societies for the support of preaching, and to the 
town in aid of its common schools. He was a man 
of strict integrity and sound judgment, preserving 
the vigor and freshness of youth until his death at 
nearly fourscore, able to carry in his memory the 
details and accounts of a large and complicated 
business, so that it was said of him, " His mind was 
his office;" an interesting companion, patriotic and 
public-spirited, fond of reading, a deep student and 
reverent lover of the Bible, a cheerful and liberal 
supporter of the institutions of learning and religion, 
loving the old doctrines, but catholic, and tolerant 
of other men's opinions. 

Alexander was fitted for colleo;e in his native town 
and at Leicester Academy. He entered Amherst Col- 
lege in 1832, and was graduated in 1836, the second 
scholar in his class, delivering the salutatory oration 
at Commencement. Professor Tyler, in his " History 
of Amherst College," says of him: — 

" His tutor in mathematics lias no recollection of particu- 
lar accuracy or brilliancy in that department. But he ex- 
celled in the classics, belles-lettres, and rhetoric ; and classmates 
and fellow-students saw the future Governor in his fine per- 
son, his courteous manners, his ambition and influence, and 
his decided bent for politics and public affairs." 



MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. XI 

Mr. Bullock entered Amherst only seven years 
after the graduation of the first class which passed 
through the full course of four years. The excel- 
lence of the training given at that early day is mani- 
fested by the number of eminent men who were his 
contemporaries. This is especially true in the de- 
partment of oratory and elegant scholarship. The 
first scholar in his class was William Bradford Homer 
who died at twenty-four, only four years out of col- 
lege, after a ministry of four months, but whose writ- 
ings, edited by Dr. Park, show that he would have 
taken a high rank in his profession. The names of 
Rev. Richard S. Storrs, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, 
Bishop Huntington, Horace Maynard, Galusha A. 
Grow, Dr. Roswell D. Hitchcock, and Ensign H. 
Kellogg are found on the catalogue in Governor 
Bullock's time. 

He remained all his life a firm friend of his College. 
He was a member of the Board of Trustees from 1852 
until his death ; president of the Alumni in 1864, 
1871, and 1881 ; and chairman of the financial com- 
mittee of the Trustees for several years. He received 
the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Amherst 
in 1865 and from Harvard in 1866. In 1871 he 
founded the Bullock scholarship of the class of 1836. 
He delivered an address to the Society of the Alumni 
on retiring from the presidency in 1863, and an ad- 
dress at the semi-centennial celebration of the found- 
ing of the College, at which he presided in 1871, 
both which are said by the historian of the College 
to be '' not more remarkable for classic elegance and 
grace than for love and devotion to Alma Mater." 



xii MEMOIR or ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

After graduating, Mr. Bullock taught school at 
Royalston and at Kingston, Rhode Island. He then 
studied law at Harvard Law School, under Story and 
Greenleaf. Leaving the Law School in 1840, he 
spent a year in the office of Emory Washburn, at 
Worcester, and was admitted to the bar in 1841. 
In 1842 he served as aid on the military staff of 
Governor John Davis. 

Mr. Bullock was a man of delicate taste and sensi- 
tive organization. He disliked personal controversy. 
While he possessed talents which would have 
rendered him a brilliant and persuasive advocate, 
the rough contests of the court house could never 
have been congenial to him. He was associated with 
Judge Thomas as junior counsel in one important 
capital trial, in which he is said to have made an elo- 
quent opening argument. He had a considerable 
clientage for a young man, to whom he was a safe 
and trustworthy adviser. But he very soon estab- 
lished a large business as agent of important in- 
surance companies, and withdrew himself altogether 
from the practice of law. 

His taste and genius led him to the paths of lit^ 
erature and politics. It was hardly possible that a 
person of his parentage and education coming to 
manhood in 1840 in Worcester County should be 
anything else but a Whig. There w^ere many things 
which tended to make that great political organiza- 
tion attractive to a cultivated and ingenuous youth, 
and to give it its strong and permanent hold on the 
people of Massachusetts. Its standard of personal 
character was very high. Its leading men every- 



MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. Xlll 

where in the State — Saltoiistall, Reed, Lincoln, 
Briggs, Allen, Choate, Davis, Everett, and their as- 
sociates — were men whose private and public honor 
was without a stain. Mr. Webster was at the ful- 
ness of his great intellectual power. The series of 
speeches and professional and political achievements 
which began with the oration at Plymouth in 1820 
was still in progress, and moved the youth of the 
State almost to idolatry. 

The Whig party possessed another advantage. Its 
political managers, who conducted its campaigns, 
made up its conventions, and largely directed its 
policy, were not its holders of office, or its seekers of 
office. It contained a large body of able and influ- 
ential men who wielded the power of absolute dis- 
interestedness. They were satisfied if they could 
contribute by counsel or labor to the well-being of 
the State by the advancement of their cherished po- 
litical principles, and asked no other reward. It was 
deemed unbecoming for a candidate for office to 
take part in the canvass either before or after his 
nomination. 

The essential difference between the two great 
parties that divided the country in 1840 was this : 
The Whigs were in favor of using wisely, but cour- 
ageously, the great public forces of nation and State 
to accomplish public objects for which private or mu- 
nicipal powers were inadequate. 

It may seem at first sight remarkable that the 
Democrats, who, with the exception of one term of 
four years, and brief fragments of two others, con- 
trolled the administration of the nation for sixty 



XIV MEMOIR OF ALEXAKDER H. BULLOCK. 

years, should have endeavored to confine within 
their narrowest limits the powers they themselves 
wielded. The Democrat was a strict constructionist 
both in the nation and in the States, — even in the 
Democratic States. The explanation is to be found 
in the fact that the Slave Power controlled the Demo- 
cratic party. The Slave Power saw that the national 
forces would in till probability one day be wielded by 
the Free States, which were growing so rapidly in 
numbers, wealth, and intelligence. It found its only 
security in pushing to an extreme the doctrine of 
State Eights as against the National Government, 
and in discouraging the promotion of education, man- 
ufactures, and railroads, even by State authority. 
The Whig demanded that the great powers of the 
Constitution should not lie unused. He wished to 
develop manufacture by national protection, to fos- 
ter internal and external commerce by liberal grants 
for rivers and harbors, to endow railroads and canals 
and other public ways by grants of public lands and 
from the treasury, to create a sound currency, to 
establish a uniform system for the collection of debts 
and the relief of debtors by a national bankrupt 
law. 

In the State, the Whig favored lending the State 
credit to railroads, the establishment at public charge 
of asylums for the blind and insane and deaf and 
dumb, gifts to colleges, and a liberal expenditure for 
schools. The strength of the Whig party was in the 
Free States ; that of the Democratic party was in 
the South. The Massachusetts Whig was the suc- 
cessor of the Federalists, whose leaders had abolished 



MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. XV 

slavery here, and who had been overthrown by the 
Virginia dynasty. The Whig party, therefore, dis- 
liked slavery, and opposed the acquisition of new 
territory for its extension. 

Mr. Bullock soon became one of the most popular 
and successful of the younger public speakers of the 
Commonwealth. His voice was finely modulated, 
pleasant, and musical. He was slightly above the 
medium height, of graceful person and carriage. He 
prepared his public addresses carefully, but always 
spoke without notes. Worcester contained at that 
time many men of great ability, among them John 
Davis, Levi Lincoln, Charles Allen, Emory Washburn, 
Ira M. Barton, Pliny Merrick, and Benjamin F. 
Thomas. But no public speaker was preferred to 
him on literary or social occasions, and no political 
audience went away satisfied, if he w^ere present and 
had not spoken. 

In 1844 Mr. Bullock married Elvira, daughter of 
Colonel A. G. Hazard, of Enfield, Connecticut, the 
founder of the celebrated company for the manufac- 
ture of gunpowder. Mrs. Bullock survives her hus- 
band. The children of this marriage were Augustus 
George ; Isabel, Avho married Nelson S. Bartlett, of 
Boston ; Fanny, who married Dr. William H. Work- 
man, of Worcester. 

March 1, 1842, Mr. Bullock became editor of the 
" National ^gis," a weekly Whig newspaper, pub- 
lished in Worcester. He retained this connection 
several years. This was a paper of remarkable abil- 
ity, and especially excellent in the department of its 
literary selections, which was due to Mr. Bullock's 



Xvi MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

extensive reading and cultivated taste. It was worth 
more than many magazines. He was also editor of 
a campaign paper called " Old Massachusetts," issued 
from the " ^Egis " office for three months before the 
Presidential election of 1844, and of a like paper 
called the " True Whig," issued from the same office 
for three months before the Presidential election of 
1848. 

Mr. Bullock represented Worcester in the Massa- 
chusetts House of Representatives in 1845, 1847, and 

1848, and the county of Worcester in the Senate in 

1849. He spoke not very frequently, and only on 
important questions, and usually with careful prepa- 
ration. Mr. Hadley, in his valuable work " Massa- 
chusetts in the Rebellion," says : — 

" The session of 1847 will be remembered as that in which 
Mr. Gushing, before the members were fairly in their seats, 
offered a resolution to pay twenty thousand dollars out of the 
treasury to the thousand, or more, volunteers for the war with 
Mexico. Mr. Gushing pressed the measure with great vehe- 
mence, and secured a favorable report from the committee to 
whom the subject was referred. Golonel Bullock, in behalf 
of a minority of the committee, opposed the resolve in a 
speech which the reports characterized as ' eloquent and mas- 
terly ; ' turning the scales of opinion against tliis most adroit 
debater, and winning for himself an honorable reputation 
throughout the State." 

His eulogy on John Quincy Adams, in 1848, was 
especially impressive. He was the recognized leader 
of the House the last two years, serving as chairman 
of the Committee on the Judiciary in 1848. 

He was Mayor of Worcester in 1859. His term 



MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. XVll 

of office was rendered memorable in the history of 
the city by the establishment of the City Library, of 
whose board of trustees he was the first president. 

He was appointed Commissioner of Insolvency for 
the County of Worcester by Governor Clifford in 
1853. The jurisdiction of these officers was trans- 
ferred to the Court of Insolvency by statute of 1856. 
Mr. Bullock was appointed Judge of that court for 
the County of Worcester in June, 1856, and held 
the office until he resigned it in 1858. 

But a greater question than any question of State 
administration was destined to disturb the repose 
of the Whigs of Massachusetts. The annexation of 
Texas in 1844, and the events of the sixteen follow- 
ing years, brought about by the restless ambition of 
the same power, separated that great historic party 
into two divisions, which became more and more 
estranged from each other until the attack on Sumter 
united them again in one overpowering sentiment of 
patriotic devotion to their country in its time of peril. 
The time has come when the survivors of each of 
these divisions may understand and do justice to the 
other. 

Mr. Bullock agreed w^ith Webster, Everett, Choate, 
and the elders amono; the Whio; leaders of Massachu- 
setts, in the belief that if slavery were confined with- 
in the bounds fixed by the Constitution, the natural 
growth of the Free Stages would constantly diminish 
its power, and the interest of the Slave States would 
in the future put an end to its existence. They be- 
lieved it desirable that the Whig organization, w^hich 

embraced moderate men in both sections of the 

b 



xviii MEMOIE OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

country, should be maintained. They dreaded the 
formation of a sectional party ; and they thought a 
party making opposition to slavery one of its dis- 
tinctive and avowed doctrines would surely be sec- 
tional. They opposed the annexation of Texas, the 
war with Mexico, the acquisition of California, and 
the aggressions upon Kansas. But they also op- 
posed the formation of a political party based on 
opposition to either of these things. Most of them 
agreed with Webster and Clay in their support of 
the Compromise measures of 1850, which they vainly 
thought would put the national discussion of slavery 
at rest forever. They believed the Southern men- 
aces of disunion were real and earnest, and dreaded 
the civil war which would follow the attempt to 
carry out these threats, as certain to be the most 
terrible of evils, and in all probability to result in 
the destruction of the nation. 

Two things must be conceded to these statesmen : 
Mrst, that they were right in their estimate of the 
sincerity of the South in its threats, and the terrible 
nature of the war which followed them ; Second, that 
to the postponement of the struggle, caused by the 
Compromise of 1850, was, in all probability, due the 
success of the North in the final conflict. 

To Webster and Choate was denied the opportu- 
nity of testifying their devotion to their country 
when the civil war came, and of showing that it was 
no lack of patriotism or love of liberty that deter- 
mined their action in the momentous period which 
preceded the war. 

Mr. Bullock, like Mr. Everett, was more fortunate. 



MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. XIX 

From the earliest breaking out of hostilities, there 
was no more zealous supporter of the Government. 
With the spring of 1861 began the most important 
and conspicuous portion of his public life. From 
1860 until his death he was recognized by the com- 
munity in which he dwelt as the most fitting expo- 
nent of its feeling on all occasions of public joy or 
sorrow. After the death of Edward Everett, on the 
15th of January, 1865, he would undoubtedly have 
been regarded by many good judges as having suc- 
ceeded to his place as the foremost orator of the 
Commonwealth. 

The events of the year 1860 satisfied Mr. Bullock 
of the hopelessness of any further attempt to com- 
promise the differences between Slavery and Free- 
dom. The purpose of strenuous resistance to the 
further encroachments of the Slave Power, at what- 
ever risk and whatever cost, which had been grow- 
ing stronger and stronger in New England since 
1856, had at length taken full possession of the great 
Middle States and of the Northwest. The conven- 
tion which nominated Lincoln was controlled by a 
spirit determined to yield no further to threats of 
disunion. 

The Democratic party had split in two. The dele- 
gations of eight Southern States had withdrawn from 
its national convention at Charleston. They had 
demanded of the followers of Douglas, who had been 
the leader in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, 
what Yancey of Alabama termed " an advanced step 
in the vindication of Southern rights." Douglas and 
his supporters, while indifferent to Slavery, begged 



XX MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

in vain that their Southern associates should not 
" take a position whicli will be absolute ruin to us 
when Ave return to our constituents." The election 
of Lincoln bj a minority of the voters of the country 
was rendered certain by this disunion. It became 
apparent that compromise and postponement of the 
issue between Slavery and Freedom were at an end. 

The sentiment of Massachusetts, of course, was 
uncompromising in its support of the position of the 
national Republican party. Mr. Bullock w^as in full 
accord with that sentiment. He favored the elec- 
tion of Mr. Lincoln, and the nomination of John A. 
Andrew, the representative of the more radical anti- 
slavery men, as candidate for Governor. He was 
himself elected to the House of Representatives of 
Massachusetts from Ward 8 of the city of Worcester. 

The Legislature met on the first Wednesday in 
January, 1861. The cloud of the approaching civil 
war was already visible to clear-sighted observers, 
by none more plainly seen than by the prophet's 
eye of John A. Andrew. 

In his inaugural address Governor Andrew clearly 
indicates his belief that war was imminent. On the 
day of his inauguration he despatched confidential 
messengers to the governors of each of the New Eng- 
land States, to urge preparation, and to concert meas- 
ures for joint action. January 16, General Order 
No. 4 was issued, requiring the commanders of all 
military companies " to examine with care their rolls, 
with a view of ascertaininsc whether there are men 
in their commands who from age, physical defects, 
business, or family causes may be unable or indis- 



MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. xxi 

posed to respond at once to the orders of the Com- 
mander-in-Chief made in response to the call of the 
President of the United States, that they may be 
forthwith discharged ; so that their places may be 
filled by men ready for any public exigency which 
may arise, whenever called upon." 

Under the same inspiration the Legislature and the 
executive officers of the State set about preparing 
for the impending danger. But there were many 
persons still incredulous. Newspapers of wide circu- 
lation, conservative and timid citizens, disappointed 
politicians of all parties, threw ridicule on what they 
termed the foolish panic of the Governor. If Mr. 
Bullock, whose sympathies and affiliations had been 
for so many years with the political opponents of 
Andrew, and who might have been not unnaturally 
looked to as his rival and competitor for future hon- 
ors, had seen fit to throw obstacles in the way of the 
courageous policy of the State administration, great 
embarrassment and public injury might have been 
the result. But Mr. Bullock zealously and ably sup- 
ported the great War Governor. He was chairman 
of the Judiciary Committee, and, as such, the rec- 
ognized leader of the House. With his friend and 
townsman, Attorney-General D wight Foster, of whom 
Governor Andrew said he was " full of the fire and 
hard-working zeal of Massachusetts," he was the 
organ of the patriotism and energy of Worcester at 
the seat of Government. 

Fort Sumter was fired upon on the 12th of April. 
The Sixth Massachusetts were attacked by an en- 
raged mob, on their passage through Baltimore, on 



XXU MEMOIK OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

the 19tli of April. The Legislature had adjourned, 
and later was reassembled in extra session on the 
14th of May. Mr. Bullock was chairman, on the 
part of the House, of the special committee to whom 
the address of the Governor, with its accompanying 
documents, was referred. He reported the " Resolves 
concerning the present Crisis," which were adopted 
by the Legislature. 

The State was foremost among the loyal States 
in the promptness with which she pressed her soldiers 
to the front, and Worcester County was behind no 
other. Mr. Bullock was fully penetrated with the 
spirit of the time, and his eloquent voice spoke the 
feeling which was in the hearts of the whole com- 
munity. On Tuesday evening, April 16, there was 
a mass meeting of the citizens of Worcester to take 
action for the equipment of the volunteer militia of 
the city. Mr. Bullock made a stirring speech in 
which he declared : " Under no circumstances will 
there be a yielding to submission and disgrace. Bet- 
ter that the earth should ingulf us than to yield our 
capital to the rebels who would seize it." 

August 23, he presented the colors to the Twenty- 
first Regiment in an admirable speech. On the 14th 
of October a great war meeting filled Mechanics' Hall 
to overflowing in aid of the formation of the Twenty- 
fifth Regiment, which was called, distinctively, " the 
Worcester Regiment." At this meeting Mr. Bullock 
made a speech which we might well be content to send 
down to the most remote posterity as a most beauti- 
ful and adequate expression of the spirit of the time. 

A few days later, on the departure of the Twenty- 



MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. XXlii 

fifth for the front, he presented to Colonel Sprague, 
an officer than whom no braver or abler left Massa- 
chusetts for the field, a horse, the gift of a few friends, 
in a speech of great eloquence and beauty. The 
value of these speeches was very great. He said, in 
his speech at the great war meeting of October 14 : 
" All hearts are as one, palpitating with a common 
hope, melted together with an intensity of patriot- 
ism that comes only from the baptism of blood. The 
guns which were levelled at Fort Sumter, levelled all 
distinctions of party, and loyal men everywhere are 
brothers." 

But that this was to so great degree true, w^as due 
to the fact that representatives of the wealth and 
conservatism of the community were inspired by the 
same loyalty and patriotism which stirred the popu- 
lar heart. Mr. Bullock was at that time one of the 
wealthy men of Worcester. " Bring on your tax- 
bills and send out the regiment," he cried ; and in 
the same speech, " Every man or woman who has 
anything to spare owes it to the country, this month 
and next, to place a portion of it, at least, in the 
public stocks. If the Government is saved, these 
will be our best estate ; if the Government is lost, 
these will be worth more than anything else, for we 
can bequeath them to our descendants as memories 
of our fidelity. Every dollar invested for the Gov- 
ernment will transcend in appreciation the annals of 
usury ; and even if it were lost, it will be riches to 
the losers, for it would be recoined in the wealth and 
treasure of the heart." 

The sound of the first gun fired upon Sumter was 



XXIV MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

heard by a people to whom the real sorrow and sacri- 
fice of war had been unknown for eighty years. It 
was expected by most of those who enUsted or urged 
enhstment in the spring and summer of 1861, that 
a few months would end the struggle. That was the 
year of patriotic enthusiasm. The year 1862 and the 
two years which followed tested the greater quality of 
steadfastness in the endurance of a sacrifice of which 
the people of Massachusetts then' fully appreciated 
the extent. There was hardly a family without its 
representative in the armies about Washington and 
Richmond. 

Mr. Bullock was re-elected to the House of Repre- 
sentatives in the fall of 1861. When the Legisla- 
ture organized in January, 1862, he was elected 
Speaker, receiving every vote cast. The duties of 
the Speaker of course were not consistent with that 
prominent share in controlling and discussing the 
business of the House which he had taken in the 
previous year. But he left the chair to advocate a 
bill for levying a special war tax of $1,800,000, a tax 
more than double any single State tax ever known 
to the people of Massachusetts. He did not seek to 
disguise the magnitude of the expenditure which 
was to be demanded of the people by the State and 
National Governments. He declared that it was un- 
doubtedly far in advance of any example of which 
we have historical information. But he exhibited 
with great clearness the reason for believing that 
the burden was one which a single generation could 
easily remove. The speech is a masterpiece of clear 
and comprehensive statement, calculated to remove 



MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. XXV 

from the public mind all imreasonable apprehension 
of financial disturbance on the one hand, and to 
impress the necessity of severe retrenchment of all 
avoidable expenditure, on the other. 

The Legislature cordially supported Andrew through 
the entire war ; and in this support no man was more 
cordial than Mr. Bullock, as his re-election to the 
office of Speaker in 18G3 by every vote but three, 
and in 1864 and 1865 by a unanimous vote, bears 
witness. He had opposed the resolutions which 
passed the Senate, and but for an adjournment would 
have passed the House, at the special session of May, 
1861, instructing the Senators and requesting the 
Representatives in Congress " to use their utmost 
efforts to secure the repeal of any and all laws which 
deprive any class of loyal subjects of the Government 
from bearing arms for the common defence." This 
was meant to remove all obstacles to the enlistment 
of colored soldiers. Mr. Bullock avowed " his wil- 
lingness to remove every vestige of disability from 
the colored citizens, and in a proper time he hoped 
to see it. This was not the time. Twenty-three 
sovereign States are a unit in this conflict. He who 
would now cast a firebrand amonoj the ranks of the 
United North and West and the Border States will 
initiate a calamity the extent of which will be ap- 
palling and inconceivable." 

But in the summer of 1862 he was ready to strike 
at slavery as alike the cause and the support of the 
Rebellion. On the 11th of July, 1862, while pre- 
senting a flag to the Thirty-fourth Regiment, he 
said : — 



XXVI MExMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

" We hail the assurances that come from the capital that 
the Government and the people begin to think alike. The 
Government is in earnest in the war. The Government is 
resolved that henceforth whatever obstacles stand in the 
way of the unity of this people, whether they be batteries of 
cannon or barricades of plantations, they must be, and they 
shall be, swept away. As slavery idealizes, vitalizes, inten- 
sifies, the armies of the South, so let freedom idealize, vital- 
ize, intensify, the armies of the North. To renationalize the 
liberty of the Constitution, I understand to be one of the 
inevitable accompaniments of this war." 

Mr. Sumner had from the beginning been nrgent 
in his demand that tlie policy of emancipation should 
be adopted by the Administration. From the 21st 
of April, 1861, when he gave to Major Devens's 
battalion on their way through New York to the 
scene of action, the watchwords, " Massacliusetts, the 
Constitution, and Freedom," from the fall of the same 
year when he made to the Republican Convention 
of Massacliusetts the speech entitled '' Emancipation 
our best Weapon," he had everywhere pressed this 
policy. He was impatient of the President's desire 
to conciliate the Border States. 

In his great speech at the Cooper Institute, New 
York, November 27, 1861, on "The Pvebellion, its 
Origin and Mainspring," he declared: "The enemy is 
before you ; nay, he comes out in ostentatious chal- 
lenge, and his name is Slavery. You can vindicate 
the Union only by his prostration." 

In his eulogy on Baker, December 11, 1861, he de- 
nounced in the Senate " that fatal forbearance, through 
which the weakness of the Rebellion is changed into 
strength, and the strength of our armies is changed 
into weakness." 



MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. XXVll 

Andrew was in entire accord with Sumner, and 
urged the immediate enhstment of the negro into 
the armies of the United States. The President, for 
reasons now well known, delayed the proclamation of 
emancipation until events should demonstrate its 
military necessity to the large majority of the people 
of the North. Many persons believed that Lincoln 
meant to carry through the war solely for the restora- 
tion of the authority of the Union and the Consti- 
tution as they were when it began, leaving the 
condition of the colored race unaffected. They saw 
in this apparent difference between the President and 
Sumner and Andrew their opportunity to drive them 
and the opinion they represented from political 
power in Massachusetts. The strength and bitter- 
ness of this purpose can hardly be credited now. At 
a great Union meeting in New York a distinguished 
speaker said that, " in his opinion, the next man who 
walked up the scaffold after Jefferson Davis should 
be Charles Sumner." 

The correspondent of a Boston newspaper declared : 
" If Sumner is re-elected it may not be convenient for 
him to pass through New York." Governor Claflin, 
then President of the Senate, declared, as early as 
1861, writing to Mr. Sumner: — 

" The truth is, there is a desperate effort under the surface 
to drive you from the Senate next winter ; and if nothing is 
done, it is feared by many that the Conservative force will 
get so strong as to drive both you and Andrew from your 
seats." 

This feeling found abundant utterance in the press 
of Massachusetts during the gloomy summer and 



XXVlli MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

autumn of 1862. A call was put forth for a People's 
Convention at Faneuil Hall, October 7, whose main 
object was to defeat the election of Mr. Sumner, to 
which many persons of great influence and undoubted 
loyalty, who had till then acted Avith the Republi- 
can party, gave their sanction. It was a period of 
dulness and gloom. 

The advance upon Richmond by McClellan, almost 
every mile of which had been a separate battle-field, 
the retreat, the change of base, the pursuit by Lee, 
the desperate and doubtful battle of Antietam, had 
filled nearly every household in Massachusetts with 
mourning for its dead. 

But the people did not falter. The friends of Mr. 
Sumner determined to make the issue at the 
Republican State Convention held at Worcester 
on the 10th of September. Of this convention Mr. 
Bullock was elected president. In his opening ad- 
dress he said he " had learned many things during 
the past year, one of which was that African slavery 
on this continent is so intimately connected with the 
war, that the two things can no longer be considered 
apart." 

It was proposed to limit the resolutions of the con- 
vention to a simple pledge to support the President 
in putting down the Rebellion. This was met by the 
counter demand for an expression of opinion as to 
the policy of the war, and that it was " the duty of 
the people not only to sustain the general in the 
field, but the President in his seat, the Governor in 
his chair, and above all the legislator in his duty." 

After an exciting debate and much dexterous 



MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. XXIX 

parliamentary management, the whole matter was 
referred to a committee appointed by the chair. 
President Bullock appointed a committee in which 
the supporters of Sumner were in the majority. 
They reported resolutions demanding the extermina- 
tion of slavery, approving the course of Mr. Sumner 
and commending him for re-election. These resolu- 
tions Avere triumphantly carried, and doubtless repre- 
sented the sentiment of the people of Massachusetts, 
on which they would have acted, no matter what 
convention or what official power had stood in the 
way. 

But the Proclamation of Emancipation came on 
the 22d of September, placing the Administration 
in full accord with Sumner and Massachusetts. This 
act inspired with new confidence the loyalty of the 
Commonwealth. The lano-uaore of determination 
and endurance was now mingled with that of hope 
and exultation. 

Mr. Bullock was among the foremost to give ex- 
pression to the general feeling. He presided over 
an immense meetino- held in Mechanics' Hall on the 
17th of October, which was addressed by Charles 
Sumner. On the oOth of the same month he ad- 
dressed another great meeting in the same place, 
which was presided over by Mayor Aldrich, assisted 
by a hundred vice-presidents. His speech is de- 
scribed, by the author of " Worcester in the War," 
as " strong in thought and ablaze with patriotic fire." 

He was elected Speaker again in January, 1863, 
receiving every vote cast except three for Caleb 
Cushing. The description which Hawthorne gives 



XXX MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

of his friend, Franklin Pierce, may well be applied to 
him : — 

"He had all the natural gifts that adapted him for the 
post, — courtesy, firmness, quickness and accuracy of judgment, 
and a clearness of mental perception that brought its own 
regularity into the scene of confused and entangled debate ; 
and to these qualities he added wliatever was to be attained 
by a laborious study of parliamentary rules." 

Mr. Sumner said of him that he would " always be 
thought of as the Speaker." 

The successes of the year 1863, although they did 
not end the Rebellion, and were followed by many 
alternations of victory and defeat, removed from the 
public mind, to a great degree, the fear of national 
destruction. Men felt they were engaged in a gi- 
gantic war, requiring gigantic efforts, but efforts to 
which the republic had demonstrated its capacity. 

The ordinary occupations of life went on, and or- 
dinary topics resumed their interest. Mr. Bullock 
delivered an address before the alumni of Amherst 
College, on the 8th of July, on the occasion of his 
relinquishing the chair as their presiding officer. 

He was elected president of the Worcester Agri- 
cultural Society in the fall of 1863, and delivered the 
annual address before that society on " Massachu- 
setts the model productive State." 

In the year 1864 Mr. Bullock was again chosen 
Speaker by a unanimous vote. In taking the chair 
he made a graceful and eloquent address, in which 
he described the great change which had come over 
the public feeling within twelve months. " When 
our predecessors met here a year ago the sky was 



MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. XXXI 

overcast. Ill fortune at home, and not altogether 
good omens abroad, impressed our hearts. It was a 
period in which men of timid counsels, men in sym- 
pathy with the public enemies, availed themselves 
of the general gloom, and added to the distraction 
and discouragement which always follow military 
reverses." 

He was chosen by the Republicans of the State 
one of the delegates at large to the National Con- 
vention, held at Baltimore, in June, 1864, and acted 
as chairman of the delegation. When the time ap- 
proached for the nomination of a governor, in the 
autumn, some persons, not inconsiderable in numbers, 
desired to bring him forward as a candidate. But 
his friend and neighbor, Judge Foster, announced to 
the convention that, " some weeks ago, by his own 
decisive action, the name of Colonel Bullock had 
been withdrawn," and moved the renomination of 
Governor Andrew by acclamation, which was carried. 

Mr. Bullock was invited by the convention to ad- 
dress them, and delivered a speech of great vigor. 
His summing up of the difference between the two 
political parties shows a capacity for vigorous blows 
rarely equalled, and makes it apparent that his fail- 
ure to engage in the angry conflicts of debate was 
not owing to any want of ability for defence or 
attack. 

" And now, Mr. President and fellow-citizens, compare our 
work and that of our adversaries. Compare the platform of 
Baltimore with the platform of Chicago. I am not going to 
detain you with a recapitulation of the characteristics of 
either. For myself, I desire to go on appeal to the American 



XXXll MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

people with no other issue than that which is presented by 
these comparative and diverse systems of political ethics. 

" The one breathes undying hostility to the public enemies, — 
the other inspires hostility only against its own Government ; 
the one swears to sustain the Government in quelling the 
rebellion by force of arms, — the other conceals the fact that 
there is any rebellion existing at all ; the one sustains the 
Government in the fixed and irreversible purpose, determina- 
tion to accept no compromise and to offer no terms of peace 
not based upon the conquest or the unconditional surrender of 
the armies of treason, — the other abjectly invites any com- 
promise whatsoever, however revolting to the manhood of 
the nation, and opens the ghastly doubt whether separation 
itself should not be accepted as the price of armistice and 
peace. 

" The Baltimore Convention resolves that the national safety 
demands the utter and complete extirpation of slavery from 
the soil of the republic ; the Chicago Convention, by its 
acquiescence, by its collateral issues, by its tone and temper, 
by all that it says, by all that it does not say, places Southern 
Slavery as the brightest sun in our coronet of empire, and 
would restore that dynasty, which before the war was a rule 
of unvarying humiliation, and which, if now replaced, would 
be a reign of intolerable despotism and disgrace. 

" Your delegates at Baltimore offered their thanks and yours 
to the soldier of the flag, and took the oath to stand by him 
unto the end, to the last of their treasure and of their hearts ; 
the delegates of Chicago offer their sympathy to the soldier 
in the one hand, and in the other hold forth to him a welcome 
to an infamy that would be traditional and perpetual here- 
after." 

From the time of the appointment of Charles Allen 
to the bench in 1858, and of the removal of Judge 
Thomas to Boston, Mr. Ballock was the chief speaker 
at all great public gatherings in Worcester, and con- 



MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. XXXIH 

stantly in demand throughout the Commonwealth, 
on all great public occasions. 

His beautiful eulogy on Everett, delivered in Fan- 
euil Hall, January 18, 1865, is one of the best of 
these occasional productions. He gave a brief but 
admirable analysis of the services, of the power as an 
orator, of the man to whose place he was himself, so 
far as any man succeeded to it, to succeed. He 
showed also that he fully appreciated, what is not 
commonly appreciated, Mr. Everett's great diplo- 
matic ability. 

On the day following the death of Lincoln, April 
15, 1865, Mr. Bullock presided over the vast as- 
semblage which gathered in Mechanics' Hall. The 
feeling of the people found adequate expression on 
that day in religious services only. But in obedi- 
ence to the proclamation of President Johnson, June 
1st was devoted to funeral honors to the memory of 
Lincoln. Mr. Bullock was selected by the City 
Council to deliver the eulogy before the people of 
Worcester. His address, published in this volume, 
ranks among the very best delivered in the coun- 
try, and will hold a high and j^ermanent place in 
literature. 

He also delivered an address before the Massachu- 
setts Charitable Mechanics' Association at its tenth 
exhibition, on September 20, on the " Relation of the 
Mechanic Arts to Liberty and Social Progress." 

Governor Andrew's work was finished. The Rebel 
capital and the Rebel armies had surrendered. The 
discussion of policies of war had given place to the 
discussion of policies of reconstruction. There was 



XXXIV MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER IL BULLOCK. 

left to those who were intrusted with administration 
in Massachusetts to welcome the veteran survivors 
and victors on their return, to build monuments to 
the fallen, to pay the debt, and to re-establish the 
economies that belong to peace. 

In anticipation of the speedy ending of the war. 
Governor Andrew announced, in January, 1865, his 
purpose not to be a candidate for another re-election. 
Mr. Bullock was called upon to succeed him by the 
general voice of the Republicans of the State. He 
had no competitor in his own party. He was unani- 
mously nominated at the State Convention held at 
Worcester on the 14th of September, 18G5, and was 
elected on the 7tli day of November, over General 
Couch, by a very large majority of votes. 

Mr. Bullock's term of office as Governor was quiet 
and uneventful. He favored the three amendments 
to the Constitution of the United States. In his 
first inaugural ddress he declared his belief that the 
questions of slavery and secession had forever been 
put at rest, and favored the speedy restoration to the 
South of her local self-government, insisting that it 
should rest on the free choice of all the people, and 
that the rights of the freedmen should be secured by 
all possible guaranties. 

He addressed himself at once to the task of bring- 
ing back the administration of the Commonwealth to 
its old ways. 

He paid a tribute to the victorious soldiery in a 
passage of rare beauty and eloquence, which the sol- 
diers delight to remember, and which has taken its 
place in the school books. 



MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. XXXV 

He received the Twenty-first and Twenty-fifth 
resriments on their return from the war with affect- 
ing and inspiring addresses of welcome. 

A most trying and painful duty descended to him 
from his predecessor. Edward W. Green, the post- 
master of the town of Maiden, also intrusted by the 
authorities of that town with the sale of school books 
and the moneys received therefrom, being a defaulter 
in both trusts, had murdered the teller of the bank 
(a boy of about eighteen years of age), at midday, by 
shooting him through the head, and robbed him of 
about five thousand dollars. He was arrested, and 
made a full confession and was indicted. When 
arraigned before the Supreme Judicial Court at a 
term held by a single judge, after being informed of 
his rights and of the effect of his plea, and after ad- 
vising with able and experienced counsel, he pleaded 
guilty of murder in the first degree. The presiding 
judge, who had previously consulted with all his 
associates on the proper course to be taken, with 
their approbation and concurrence, received the plea 
and sentenced the prisoner to be executed. 

Murder in the first degree alone could be capitally 
punished under the law. The statute which defined 
the degrees of murder enacted also that the degree 
of murder should be for the jury. Upon this statute 
Governor Andrew doubted whether it was compe- 
tent for the court, especially when held by a single 
judge, to enter judgment against a prisoner and 
award sentence of death upon his own plea of guilty 
of murder in the first degree ; or whether they 
should not either render judgment of guilty of mur- 



XXXVl MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

der in the second degree, or impanel a jury to de- 
termine the question. 

He submitted this question to the Supreme Court 
under the provisions of the Constitution. The court 
rephed that the provision in question applied only to 
the case of a plea of guilty, or of guilty of murder in 
the second degree, and did not affect proceedings under 
the statute which provides that " a person indicted for 
a capital crime may be arraigned before the court 
held by one justice, and if he pleads guilty, such court 
may award sentence against him according to law." 

This opinion was afterwards reaffirmed on a writ 
of error in the same case. Governor Andrew's 
council declined to recommend a reprieve of sen- 
tence, but recommended a day for its execution, and 
again in the following year renewed their refusal. 
Governor Andrew still remained unwilling to issue 
his warrant for the execution ; and Green, who had 
been sentenced April 25, 1864, was left in prison 
awaiting executive action on Governor Bullock's 
accession, in January, 18G6. His duty was a very 
plain, though very painful one. 

In discharging it he encountered much vitupera- 
tion, and was compelled to resist the solicitations of 
some very excellent and influential citizens. But in 
a clear and masterly statement he pointed out to the 
Council, that to decline to execute the law for such 
reasons would be to invade the province of the 
Judiciary by the Executive, to decide a question be- 
longing under the Constitution and law exclusively 
to the court, and would also put it in the power of 
the malefactor to escape punishment altogether, by 



MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. XXXVll 

pleading guilty of the capital offence, the court hav- 
ing held that in such case no provision for a jury 
trial existed. The Council concurred with the Gov- 
ernor, and the law took its course. 

Governor Bullock always favored leaving to the 
direct action of the people the decision of important 
questions when practicable. He vetoed an act an- 
nexing Roxbury to Boston because it did not provide 
for submitting the question to the people of the two 
cities. He favored leaving the question of sale* of 
liquor to be determined by the option of the locali- 
ties affected. 

He was by nature averse to strife. Probably no 
man of his time, or of any time, so conspicuous in 
public life in Massachusetts, encountered less of per- 
sonal controversy. But he knew well how to pro- 
tect his own dignity when invaded, as was shown by 
an encounter with the House of Representatives dur- 
ing the session of 1868. 

The Governor had, as authorized by the Constitu- 
tion, permitted a bill in regard to the sale of intoxi- 
cating liquors which had been the subject of angry 
public discussion, to become a law, by retaining it 
more than five days without his signature. He had 
sent a messao-e to the Leo;islature statins; his reasons 
for his course, which the House, deeming the mes- 
sage a departure from official usage, and disturbed 
by the Governor's attitude, directed to be returned 
to him by its committee. 

His courteous and quiet reply, made on the instant 
to the committee when it waited on him with the 
communication, showed the hand of steel beneath the 



XXXVlll MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

glove of silk. The discomfited committee retired to 
their equally discomfited principals. 

Governor Bullock's administration, as has been 
already said, was an uneventful one. It M^as a time 
of progress and prosperity. The unnatural stimu- 
lant to business, caused by an inflated currency, had 
not yet begun to show its evil effects. 

The South was resuming its ordinary occupations, 
and the supply of its wants made the workshops of 
Massachusetts busy. Succeeding to the great place 
which Andrew had left vacant after the stormy and 
exciting days whose labors and anxieties he had so 
fully shared, it is praise enough for him to say that 
he was able and ready to guide the people of the 
Commonwealth in their return to the paths of peace. 

In addition to his performance of his proper offi- 
cial duties, he delivered, during the years 18GG, 1867, 
and 1868, many public addresses, all showing his ac- 
customed scholarship and beauty of finish. 

Mr. Bullock was re-elected for the years 1867 and 
1868. He declined re-election in the autumn of the 
latter year. 

When Mr. Bullock Laid down the office of Governor, 
in January, 1869, it seemed likely that a long career 
of brilliant national public service was before him. 
He was not yet fifty-three years old. He was in the 
full vigor of his fiiculties, both of body and mind. 
He was exempted from the necessity of labor for 
support of his household. He was in accord with the 
large majority of the people of his State on the great 
public questions of the immediate past and the 
immediate future. His reputation was without a 



MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. XXxix 

stain. He had an attractive and elegant manner. 
He had no enemies. He was, more than any other 
of the men conspicuous in his own party, a favorite 
with his pohtical opponents. His extensive histori- 
cal and Hterary studies had filled his mind with 
stores fitted for use and for ornament. 

Above all, he possessed, beyond any of his living 
contemporaries, that rare gift of eloquence which 
always has been and always will be a passport to the 
favor of the people where speech is free. 

But the honors he had enjoyed seemed to have 
filled the measure of his ambition. He visited Eu- 
rope in 18G9, and returned to devote himself to 
the duties, cares, and enjoyments of private citizen- 
ship. He was not an uninterested spectator of the 
great public events of the period of reconstruction, 
of the funding and payment of the public debt, of 
the return to specie payment, and the overcoming, 
by new and stricter administrative methods and an 
aroused and jealous public opinion, the tendency to 
waste and corruption which always follows a great 
war. 

But he gave no encouragement to the suggestion 
made from influential quarters that he should be a 
candidate for public office. He was more than once 
requested to consent to be a candidate for Congress, 
but refused. 

In 1874, when the writer had publicly signified his 
desire to withdraw from the representation of his dis- 
trict, Mr. Bullock wrote a published letter declining 
to be a candidate for a succession which was un- 
doubtedly within his reach. 



xl MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

On the 5tli of January, 1879, the writer was 
authorized by President Hayes to communicate to 
Governor Bullock the President's desire to appoint 
him to the English Mission, then vacant. The fol- 
lowing is his reply : — 

Worcester, Dec. S, 1879. 

My dear Sir, — I received yesterday your favor of the 5th 
inst., in which you kindly inquire, in behalf of the President, 
whether I would undertake the Mission to England. I have 
felt at liberty to take to myself twenty-four hours to consider 
this question, and I now apprise you of the conclusion to 
"which my reflection has with much reluctance brought me. 
I am compelled, by the situation of my family, to reply that 
it would be practically impossible for me to accept this 
appointment. 

I particularly desire to express to the President my pro- 
found and grateful acknowledgment of the high distinction 
he has offered to confer upon me, and to assure him of my 
purpose in every way as a private citizen to uphold him in 
his wise and patriotic administration of the government. 

Your communication has been, and will continue to be, 
treated by me as confidential. 

I remain, with great respect and esteem. 

Truly and faithfully yours, 

Alexander H, Bullock. 

The Hon. Geo. F. Hoar, U. S. S. 

During these years, however, he was in constant 
demand as an orator at college festivals, by literary 
societies and on public occasions of every kind. His- 
contributions to this class of literature during the 
last twelve years of his life are of great variety and 
value. 

The speech at the dedication of the Soldiers' Mon- 



MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. xli 

ument in Worcester ; the address on " Intellectual 
Leadership in American History," before the literary 
societies of Brown University ; the address on the 
Centennial Situation of Woman, delivered June 22, 
1876, at Mt. Holyoke Seminary ; his speech in New 
York, November 20, 1880, at the unveiling of the 
statue of Alexander Hamilton, — are admirable ex- 
amples of his power. They show that he was still 
growing. 

The quality of his style of thought and ex- 
pression is nowhere better exhibited than in the 
paper read before the Antiquarian Society April 27, 
1881, entitled "Centennial of the Massachusetts 
Constitution." 

After Governor Bullock's last return from Europe, 
in 1880, he was disposed to yield to the earnest de- 
sire of his townsmen that he should take a large share 
in the management of the business institutions which 
had become so great and important. The experi- 
ence of some other communities of a kind from which 
we had not been altogether exempt had taught us 
that there is no safety for property but in the char- 
acter and fidelity of those who are intrusted with its 
management. 

Mr. Bullock was conspicuous for excellent judg- 
ment in the administration of business affairs. The 
community felt that any institution was safe Avhich 
could secure his personal supervision. He undertook 
responsibilities of this kind which pledged him to a 
life of great labor and care. He was chosen presi- 
dent of the Worcester County Institution for Savings, 
director in the Worcester National Bank, president 



Xlii MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER II. BULLOCK. 

of the State Mutual Life Assurance Compan}^, and 
chairman of the Commissioners of the Sinking Fund 
of the City of Worcester, and of the Financial Com- 
mittee of the Trustees of Amherst College. 

Every man felt that the invested property of 
"Worcester was more valuable by an appreciable per- 
centage in consequence of his consent to give to it 
the aid of his sound judgment and the security of his 
integrity. 

These hopes were doomed to be disappointed. 
Governor Bullock, as it has been since disclosed, had 
for some time been conscious of symptoms which had 
led him to apprehend that a sudden termination of 
his life was not improbable. He had put his affairs 
in order. He had suffered somewhat from indiges- 
tion, and had been careful as to diet and exercise, but 
made no other change in his daily habits. 

On the 17th day of January, 1882, in the after- 
noon, he went down street and visited some of the 
offices where he was in the habit of calling. He was 
returning home, and had just passed the corner of 
Chestnut Street, on his way up Elm Street, when a 
young man who Avas walking beside him, saw him 
turn suddenly, drop his cane, and seize the railing of 
the fence as if for support. Almost immediately he 
threw himself backward, and was prevented from 
falling by the young man at his side, who asked if he 
was hurt. He made no answer, and neither spoke 
nor gave any sign of consciousness afterward. 

He was taken into the house of Mr. C. W. Smith. 
Two physicians arrived almost instantly, but life was 
extinct. 



MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. xliii 

His death caused a severe shock, not only in 
Massachusetts, but throughout the country. The 
*' Worcester Spy," of next morning, says : — 

" It was confidently hoped that in the full and rich ma- 
turity of his powers, unvexed by cares or ambition, he would 
continue for many years an ornament and honor to the 
city, serving his neighbors by his counsels, giving strength 
and credit to our financial institutions by his experience in 
affairs and the trust which his name justly inspired, and 
employing his leisure with those studies in which he de- 
lighted and which he made so fruitful in historical research, 
in wide suggestion, in eloquent warning and stimulus to 
high and heroic action. 

" Leisure so employed was spent in the public service, and 
this was the life which he had planned for his declining years. 
But the end has come with startling suddenness. And 
though the shock is painful, we cannot doubt that for him it 
is better so. We shall miss his familiar figure in our streets ; 
his absence will make a gap hard to fill in the direction of 
many local institutions. We shall lack an eloquent exponent 
of the popular emotion on occasions of public rejoicing or 
sorrow. His counsels will be wanting in public exigencies. 
But he has left behind him the memory of great trusts 
worthily discharged, of opportunities for usefulness well im- 
proved, of a private life honorable, beautiful, and without a 
stain." 

There was nowhere, it is believed, a dissenting 
voice from this judgment. This memoir has been 
designed only as a sketch, necessarily imperfect, of 
the public life and character of its subject, and of 
those moral and intellectual qualities which made 
that life one of so great value in its generation. Mr. 
Bullock's refined and delicate nature found, as his 



xliv MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

life advanced, its most congenial atmosphere within 
the walls of his home, and led him to shrink more and 
more from the rough strifes of politics. He delighted 
in days spent in literary pursuits in his library, and 
in evenings of hospitable welcome to neighbors, 
friends, and strangers. His strong domestic affections 
found most abundant satisfaction in his own family 
circle, " where," says a near neighbor and intimate 
friend, " his home life diffused all around it an influ- 
ence and charm, and by its high example elevated 
the standard of the domestic and moral life of a 
whole community." 

He was stainless, wise, patriotic, fit to be trusted 
with the administration of great interests, public or 
private. He was a lover of scholarship. He had 
the ear of the people during a time of great peril 
and trial. He never gave it dishonorable counsel, 
or uttered a word which would debase or degrade 
it. 

The place of the orator in a free state will ever be 
discnified and honorable. There is no artist who can 
give greater or purer delight than this. A town, or 
city, or state is v^ry human. In sorrow it must 
utter its cry of pain ; in victory, its note of triumph. 
As great events pass, it must pronounce its judg- 
ment. Its constant purpose must be fixed and made 
more steadfiist by public expression. It must give 
voice to its love, and its approbation, and its condem- 
nation. It must register the high and low water 
mark of its tide, its rising and sinking in heat and 
cold. 

This is the office which Governor Bullock, from 



MEMOIR OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. xlv 

1860 until his death, performed for the community 
in which he dwelt. The camera of his delicate pho- 
tography has preserved for future generations what 
passed in tlie soul of ours, in the times that tried 
the souls of men. 

GEORGE F. HOAR. 



ADDRESSES 



ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 



ADDRESSES 



OF 



ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 



SPEECH AT A WAR MEETING, 

to aid and excoorage the formation of the third worcester 
county regiment, at mechanics' hall, oct. 14, 1861. 

Mr. Mayor and Fellow-Citizens : 

If I had much to say, or if this were any ordinary occasion, 
I should deem it expedient to conciliate you by apology. 
But the able and excellent remarks of our friend, the Sena- 
tor, — himself the commander of regiments, — have rendered 
my duty absolutely a brief one, and the exercise of your 
patience comparatively easy. 

The objects of the meeting appear to me half accomplished 
if we apprehend the magnitude of the national crisis. This 
presence is itself an illustration of the exigency which sum- 
mons us. This attendance, these cheering countenances, we 
have seen here before, when the hall was lighted and its 
arches echoed for political success and party victories. But 
tills bond and tie of unity, in which all hearts are as one, 
palpitating with a common hope, melted together with an 
intensity of patriotism that comes only from the baptism of 
blood, — this betokens another era and a new consecration. 
The contests, successes, defeats, and illuminations of the past 
are extinguished. The whole scene, all the thoughts and 
diversities of men, have been changed in an hour. The guns 



2 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

which were levelled at Fort Sumter levelled all distinctions of 
party, and loyal men everywhere are brothers. We are 
struggling for national life. The nation itself is in arms to 
maintain its unity and government. Hitherto slumbering 
in our prosperity, we have at last been awakened by the 
shock of open rebellion to contemplate the value of the 
Government, and the necessity, at all hazards and by every 
conceivable sacrifice, of rescuing it from the perils which are 
threatening to ingulf it. 

The meeting is called of " all who are in favor of a vigorous 
prosecution of the war." I should like to see a meeting of all 
who are not in favor of a vigorous prosecution of the war. 
Some few such have been attempted in the State of Connecti- 
cut, but they were instantly squelched by an indignant people. 
And, sir, wliat citizen is not in favor of his own honor and 
his own existence ? What citizen is base enough to covet for 
himself prematurely a grave so disgraceful that the worm 
which should prey upon his body would be purity itself in 
comparison with the heart of its victim ? And yet such a 
man would be an angel of light in comparison with him who 
is willing that this Government should go down to an un- 
timely and ignominious tomb, so long as an arm or a dollar is 
left to defend it. Any doubt about a vigorous prosecution of 
the war ? Any doubt about preserving our capital, our Union, 
our liberty, the memories of the grand and solemn past, 
the glories of the present, the inheritance of our children ? 
Any doubt about our raising another regiment from the 
city and county of Worcester, when the earth everywhere 
is trembling under men who are uniting their hands and 
measuring their tread for the conflict ? Why, sir, at the 
expression of such hesitation, methinks the bones of old 
Jackson are already reinvesting themselves with the habili- 
ments of life, and preparing to burst forth from his bed in 
his own dishonored Tennessee and M^alk forth for revenge 
among us. Are we hesitating when the living appeals of 
Lincoln and the dying testimony of Douglas are stirring up a 



SPEECH AT A WAK MEETING. 3 

nation of volunteers in the West ? The blood of the brave 
Lyon is crying out to us from the ground. Our own sous and 
brothers are already in the field, and from the command of 
the gallant Fremont, and Eosencranz, and Wool, and heroic 
young McClellan, they are calling to us for help. They 
can defend themselves as they are, but that is not enough. 
A quarter of a million more men are wanted to bear the 
flag into every inlet, and plant it upon every cape, from the 
mouth of the Chesapeake to the Mississippi ; new regi- 
ments are wanted to penetrate to the haunts of the Union- 
loving people of Tennessee and North Carolina and Virginia, 
to carry our upholding sympathies to them at the point of the 
bayonet, and to extend over them the protection of the Gov- 
ernment until they can uphold the flag on their own soil. 
By our aid they can and shortly w'ill do it ; without our help, 
timely and abundant, all may be lost. 

If money is wanted, it must be had. And let us make the 
beginning to-night by pledging our faith to the Government 
and our confidence in its securities. Some of our banks have 
alread}'' done largely and well, and I honor their managers for 
the action. But we have yet to bring this subject to our own 
individual consciousness of duty. Every man or woman who 
has anything to spare owes it to the country, this month and 
next, to place a portion of it at least in the public stocks. If 
the Government is saved, these will be our best estate ; if the 
Government be lost, these will be worth more than anything 
else, for we can bequeath them to our descendants as memo- 
rials of our fidelity ! If we cast our eye over the lines into 
the dark and bloody Confederacy, we behold a people receiv- 
ing only Confederate bonds for one of the richest crops of the 
world ; and when they ask whether these ate of any value, 
Mr. Stephens tells them, No, if they shall be conquered, but 
that they are in that case worth as much as anything else to 
them. And they are acting heroically up to the injunction. 
Are we doing so well ? The man who at such a time as this 
withholds his surplus cash to shave a note or to pick up a 



4 ADDKESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

choice opportunity out of somebody's misfortune, and goes 
about the streets with a bowed head croaking and shivering 
in the wind, commend to go to his closet on the approaching 
day of liumiliation and fast, that he may take a lesson from 
the woman who wasted the precious ointment upon the feet 
of our divine Lord and Saviour. She was saved ; he, if he 
persist, is already lost. Every dollar invested for the Govern- 
ment will transcend in appreciation the annals of usury ; and 
even if it were lost it would be riches to the loser, for it 
would be recoined in the wealth and treasure of the heart. 
It behooves us all to spare something, to save something, for 
the public securities. As somebody has said, it will prove to 
be the silver bullet which will penetrate the heart of the 
rebellion. 

And further than this, Mr. Mayor, and invoking your par- 
ticular attention to the point, I have the confidence to say 
that if it be necessary that any money should be raised by the 
city of Worcester in order to secure the speedy enlistment of 
the new regiment under Upton and Sprague, it must he had. 
If I could see this matter reduced to a probable alternative 
trembling in the visible scales, — at the one end of the beam 
the question of sending out in thirty days a new regiment 
from the city and county of Worcester, and at the other end 
the question of an addition of thousands of dollars to the 
debt and taxes of the city, — I would strike the balance this 
instant, and as one citizen and one tax-payer say to you, Bring 
on your tax bills and send out your regiment. We have but 
just begun to drop the plummet to the depths of this question. 
It involves the issues of life and death. Whatever we may 
be called on to contribute, after all, it is only giving up a part 
for the preservation of the whole. And if all the treasure of 
the loyal States be necessary to carry this war against treason 
to its consummation, it must and it will be furnished ; for the 
great stake, the Union, is worth the sacrifice. Ah, we should 
be a generation that ought to covet the forgetfulness of all 
future ages if we could be willing to save our treasure by 



SPEECH AT A WAR MEETING. 5 

losing our Government, carrying to our graves, if it were 
possible, an influence which had cost us the loss of our own 
self-respect and the scorn and contempt of our children I 

And as lives are necessary, they, too, must be freely offered. 
The soldier understands it. The feet of armies tread upon 
the margin of the dark valley of the shadow of death. And 
yet — such is the order of war, the experience of nations — 
the good and watchful providence of God brings most in 
safety away. Some must needs enter within the portals. 
But what is death, at the post of duty, in defence of our 
country, in the cause of liberty, with the flag of our country 
for a winding-sheet, and the assurance of a nation's grati- 
tude ? So slept the brave defender of Missouri, and awoke to 
immortal fame. So sleeps every true soldier who falls under 
his flag. 

" There is a tear for all that die, 

A mourner o'er the humblest grave ; 
But nations swell the funeral cry. 
And freedom weeps above the brave. 

*' For them is sorrow's purest sigh 
O'er ocean's heaving bosom sent. 
In vain their bones unburied lie ; 
All earth becomes their monument. 

" A tomb is theirs on every page, 
An epitaph on every tongue ; 
The present hours, the future age, 
.Nor them bewail, to them belong. 

" A theme to crowds that knew them not. 
Lamented by admiring foes, 
Who would not share their glorious lot ? 
Who would not die the death they chose ? " 

I conclude that a vigorous prosecution of the war is to us a 
political choice of duty and patriotism, but it is also our 
necessity. The suggestion of peace at the present stage of 
the conflict is an impossibility. A man might as well apply 
for life insurance on his death-bed. Who and where is he 
that would think of compromise with an enemy thundering 



6 ADDEESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

at the gates of the capital ? We may as well, once for all, 
bring our minds to a contemplation of the dread reality. We 
may no longer talk as we would if it were a question of 
averting war. We are in civil war by no fault or act or 
responsibility of ours. We are in civil war, and somebody 
must conquer, and somebody else must be conquered, before 
there can be a possibility of peace. The great historic crisis 
has been cast upon us, — so strange, so sad, — and we cannot 
avoid it nor run away from it. It is Union, the whole or 
none. It is the Government, saved or lost. It is the national 
unity, preserved or extinguished. The decrees of Providence, 
the converging lines of history, the Eevolution, the Confed- 
eration, the Constitution, and seventy years of happiness and 
renown under it, Washington and Madison and Jackson, all 
have stamped the seal upon the issue, and it is — One Country, 
One Constitution, One Destiny. It is this or nothing. The 
republic of the United States or the republic of the Con- 
federate States is to have the government of all tliis imperial 
domain. To this alternative has it come at last. So it 
appears to me now. 

And what an alternative is that ! The movers of this 
rebellion have for years been at this work to thrust this 
Government from its sphere of light, and send it like a baleful 
meteor through untravelled paths of darkness, to transform 
gradually but surely the Constitution of the American Union, 
the creation of liberty, into the embodiment of some of the 
worst features of a feudal and barbarous age, with only the 
allurements of an outward prosperity to decorate and mystify 
the appalling sacrifice. Failing at the last moment to attain 
their objects through the ordinary machinery of popular elec- 
tions, they have rushed precipitately to the accomplishment 
of their designs in another way, and have made open war 
upon the Government. And at the same time that they have 
been doing tliis, they have also organized a confederacy of 
their own, and promulgated a constitution of which the basis 
is the same exclusive and barbarous element which they had 



SPEECH AT A WAR MEETING. 7 

aimed to incorporate into the government of this Union. 
You know what it is. And that constitution, founded upon 
that theory, they offer to us as the measure of their terms of 
peace. It is one of the marvellous disclosures of these times 
that these architects of treason appear to have hojjed and 
expected that the monstrous doctrine of their confederacy 
should become the basis of a reconstruction of the American 
Union ; and that we, one after another, like lost and prodigal 
children found and restored again, — the great, free, and 
sovereign communities of the North and the West and the 
Centre, — would in due time be found knocking at the door 
of their confederacy, and asking permission to rest under the 
banner of the palmetto and the radiance of stars that never 
yet were lighted. Pitiable desperadoes ! Their history cannot 
be fully or justly written until science shall have recon- 
structed the classification of the human race. Such are the 
terms that are proposed. By accepting them we can have 
peace before another nightfall. 

And have you not sometimes thought that there are those 
at the North, — the Lord knows them if they exist at all, — 
in Massachusetts or in Connecticut, who, as the measure of 
their terms of surrender and peace, would accept the humilia- 
tion and shame, and pass under the yoke ? They spend the 
livelong day in complaining about the war, and how easily it 
might have been avoided, and in hungering and thirsting 
after peace, when there are no parties to make a peace. 
Mark them well ! You will find them dissuading their neigh- 
bors from enlisting in defence of their country. Let such 
pass at an early day within the enemy's lines, and go at once 
to work at his guns ; then no longer will their countenances 
or their tongues deceive or betray our cause. 

But let us, fellow-citizens, rather rally around the patriotic 
and resolute and incorruptible President, forgetful of all party 
lines which have hitherto divided us, remembering only that 
he is, by the free choice of the American people and in 
the hands of Providence, the impersonation of the last hope 



8 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

of constitutional liberty in the centuries. Let us rather 
emblazon over our dwellings the counsel of the departed 
Douglas, — that no man can be a true Democrat who is not 
loyal to the Union. Let us rather throw open our hearts to 
the inspiring admonitions of the noble and eloquent Holt, 
and, with our lives and our fortunes in our hands, exclaim to 
the President, Use them freely, use them boldly, but use them 
successfully. Let us rather bestow our approving sympathies 
upon the enthusiastic commander of the West, who is organ- 
izing her imperial army to bear the standard of the Union 
along the Father of Waters, with a proclamation floating from 
the eagle of every regiment, which will make it no fault of 
his, nor of ours, nor of the Government, if every steamer from 
New Orleans to Cairo shall be crowded with two-legged con- 
trabands, thick as bees in swarming time. Let us rather 
follow with our prayers and benedictions those who have 
gone out from our own midst, counting not their own lives 
dear to them if so be they may die under the stars and stripes, 
and leave a country and a government behind them. Let us 
rather, in patriotic competition with other communities of 
Massachusetts, and with all possible despatch, set about the 
enrolment of another regiment from the city and county of 
Worcester, who, under the gallant and popular officers desig- 
nated by the Governor, and generously mingling the currents 
of Celtic and Teutonic and Yankee blood, shall bear the 
honor of the Government and tlie symbol of the Union to 
whatever field they may be ordered. Our cause is just, 
and time is fleeting. Make up the regiment, and the victory 
is won. 



MASSACHUSETTS AND THE WAR TAX. 

ADDRESS IN THE MASSACHUSETTS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 
APRIL 10, 1862. 

Me. Speaker, — During a period of three months marked 
by events in the country which in other ages would have fur- 
nished history for a generation, involving, frequently, painful 
alternations of hope and doubt, — at one time darkened by 
general depression, but of late become luminous by a series 
of achievements "which promise the happiest results, — it has 
been our duty, throughout the whole, to attend patiently to 
the interests of our own Commonwealth. That duty, I need 
not say, has been discharged with an unusual degree of har- 
mony among ourselves. One of the last of our public acts is 
now under consideration, and upon that we are all agreed, 
which is to levy the tax. All the other assurances of war 
have been spread out so long and so vividly, that our senses 
have become accustomed to the scenes passing around us. 
Without conditions we have urged the General Government 
to furnish appliances for the conflict; and upon the able, 
patriotic, and energetic Chief Magistrate of Massachusetts we 
have conferred full authority for every form of expenditure 
which the service might require. We have met the exigency 
without reservation. But now it is that another evidence of 
a state of war confronts us, and demands our recognition and 
action. The bills are coming in ; the debt is to be provided 
for. The bills are many, and the debt will be large; but 
they are upon us, and must be met. 



10 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

And here let me appeal to the Eepreseutatives, and through 
them to the people of the State, not to overlook one consider- 
ation which may well furnish a solace amid the public bur- 
dens. Since war has been forced upon us, — war of such 
dimensions that, in comparison with it, all our previous ex- 
perience passes into an eclipse, — we ought to regard it as 
some compensation for the sacrifices required of us, that the 
conflict is removed from our own doors. In the commence- 
ment of the contest, and in one of his last public addresses, 
Mr. Douglas, whose untimely death I am sure we all deplore, 
justly exhorted the Government to act with such vigor that 
it should be a war in the cotton-fields of tlie South, and not 
in the cornfields of the North. That has been accomplished. 
And when the people of Massachusetts look about them, and 
contemplate their own condition, — their fields and marts 
and workshops comparatively undisturbed ; the ordinary chan- 
nel and current of their life, if impeded, not closed up ; their 
institutions under free and full progress ; their domestic tran- 
quillity not molested, — and compare all this with the waste 
and desolation which have swept the field of operations in 
the States upon the border, certainly they cannot fail to ap- 
preciate the beneficent Providence which has tempered the 
severity of their burdens with a mercy of divine economy. 
The war produces embarrassments here ; but there are States 
where it makes solitudes. 

In our discussions concerning the public debt and taxation, 
whether here or in the country, I deem it of high importance 
that we should avoid all extremes of sensation. Some there 
are who speak of national bankruptcy ; while others treat our 
unexampled expenditures as a light matter, not likely to pro- 
duce any appreciable inconvenience to the people. Both 
classes of persons are, in my judgment, equally unsafe guides. 
The accumulation of debt, which is now unavoidable, is un- 
precedented in its magnitude ; but it will be met, and we 
shall not become bankrupt. 

We ought not to attempt any disguise of the magnitude of 



MASSACHUSETTS AND THE WAR TAX. 11 

the present expenditures. They are undoubtedly far in ad- 
vance of any example of which we have historical informa- 
tion. War, at all times expensive, has been rendered doubly 
extravagant in our case, by the surprise and the exigency 
which demanded immediate outlays, without the benefit of 
that order and system which can only be realized when there 
is time for deliberation and preparation. Waste and fraud, 
also, have doubtless done their full share to swell the amount. 
At tliis moment no man in the country can have any exact 
idea of the rate at which we are massing the debt. There is 
a discrepancy between the Secretary of the Treasury and the 
gentlemen of the Ways and Means, and I doubt if any two 
of the latter would state the matter in the same figures. 
Averaging these authorities, we might find that our expen- 
diture will amount to $800,000,000 or $900,000,000 by 
January next, and to $1,200,000,000 by July following.i 
I see it stated by a member of the Senate, that we are 
expending at the rate of thirty dollars a head in a loyal 
population of 23,000,000, while England, at the height of 
her war with Napoleon, did not go beyond twenty dollars per 
head. I do not know how such statements in detail may 
correspond with the actual facts ; but it is certain that the 
accumulation of our disbursements is without a parallel. The 
greatest stride that was ever made in the British debt was 
from 1803 to 1815, a period of twelve years, during which Eng- 
land conducted the battles of the nationalities of Europe, in- 
creasing her debt in that time a little more than $1,500,000,000. 
And who of us all would not be willing to-day to close in ad- 
vance the final account of the present war, by estimating the 
cost of the subjugation of the rebellion, and the recovery of 
the public liberties, from April, 1861, to April, 1863, to be no 
more, after the lapse of two years, than that of Great Britain 
at the expiration of twelve years ? Such rapidity and extent 
of indebtedness as this would have baffled the powers of any 

1 Mr. Stevens, the Chairman of Ways and Means, has since stated the 
expenditures at a much higher rate. 



12 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

European government recorded in the annals of time. If, at 
the commencement of this century, the British Ministry had 
promulgated its intention to expend a thousand five hundred 
millions in resisting for two years the arch foe of the peace and 
stability of the island, solemn and profound as was the sense of 
danger and of duty which pervaded the minds of Englishmen, 
I verily believe the keys of office would have fallen from the 
hands of administration in thirty days. The American peo- 
ple, and the American people alone, could be called upon to 
cope with the great problem which in the foreknowledge of 
God has been reserved for our time and our country. Be- 
lieve not that we are to sustain these burdens, and not have 
care and thought engraved upon our faces. The day of se- 
vere fact is before us. Nevertheless, the analogies of our 
experience, the miracles of our history, the configuration of 
our land, richest of the earth and made for enipire, the knit 
and compacted character of our people, built up on Teutonic 
foundations yet flexible with the capacities of all choicest 
nationalities, the gloom and despair of our fathers turned to 
hope and fruition before they slept, move us forward with 
inspiring belief that what would have discouraged other na- 
tions is in our case a practicality which a single generation 
can crown with performance. 

We are entering, then, upon an era of national debt. 
Great wars always bequeath such a legacy to succeeding 
peace. This Government is running an account which cannot 
be liquidated in ten years, perhaps not in twenty ; and it is 
right that it should be so. We are struggling for the pat- 
rimony of our children, and some portion of the cost will 
justly descend to them with the blessings of the purchase. 
I hear it sometimes said in the street that a public debt is a 
public good ; but such remarks always appear to me as the 
impulse of unreflecting minds. It was never clear to my 
comprehension how a debt could be a benefit. In his opinions 
upon that subject, Hamilton in his youth possessed at least 
the wisdom of Burke in his age. And yet the history of 



MASSACHUSETTS AND THE WAR TAX. 13 

Great Britain, and of our country as well, has shown that a 
national debt, if it be a burden, is nothing more. We of 
this generation have been so long enabled to pay as we go 
along, that it is no wonder that the shadows of the present 
fiscal emergency darken the spirits of men whose life has 
been accustomed only to peace theories of finance. In this 
respect we are only reproducing the experience of those who 
have gone before us. It is now a hundred and seventy years 
since the first permanent English loan was made by Par- 
liament, inaugurating that policy which has astonished half 
a dozen generations of statesmen by a debt constantly aug- 
menting and yet not visibly obstructing the prosperity of the 
empire. Tlie historian who better than others has analyzed 
the domestic and social condition of the people — Lord Ma- 
caulay — has portrayed the alarm which seized upon business 
men and publicists as often as any accession was made to 
the debt of England : — 

" At every stage in the growth of that debt it has been seriously 
asserted by wise men that bankruptcy and ruin were at hand. At 
every stage in the growth of that debt the nation has set up the 
same cry of anguish and despair. Yet still the debt went on 
growing ; and still bankruptcy and ruin were as remote as ever." 

This apprehension reached the acme of discouragement in 
1815, when at the close of the last of the wars with France 
the funded debt of England amounted to four thousand 
millions of dollars, 

" It was in truth a gigantic, a fabulous debt ; and we can hardly 
wonder that the cry of despair should have been louder than ever. 
But again the cry was found to have been as unreasonable as ever. 
The beggared, the bankrupt society not only proved able to meet all 
its obligations, but, while meeting those obhgations, grew richer 
and richer so fast that tlie growth could almost be discerned by 
the eye." 

The same writer gives his explanation of the fallacy of those 
who prophesied nothing but general destruction : — 



14 ADDEESSES OF ALEXANDEK H. BULLOCK. 

"They erroneously imagined that there was an exact analogy 
between the case of an individual who is in debt to another individ- 
ual, and the case of society which is in debt to a part of itself. 
They were under an error not less serious touching the resources of 
the country. They made no allowance for the effect produced by 
the incessant progress of every experimental science, and by the 
incessant efforts of every man to get on in life. They saw that 
the debt grew ; and they forgot that other things grew as well 
as the debt." 

And the noble historian affirms without fear of contra- 
diction that England may in the next century be better able 
to bear a debt of eight thousand millions of dollars than she 
is at the present time to bear her existing load. It is quite 
possible that the love of the sparkle of antithesis, which 
marks the writings of the brilliant essayist and philosopher, 
may have beguiled him into a somewhat extreme presen- 
tation of substantial truths ; but I think we must admit the 
soundness of the political economy which imparts strength 
to the silver nerves of his rhetoric. At all events, the views 
he has presented of the resources of the English nation as the 
solid basis for public debt, may be applied with redoubled 
and intensified force to the actual and prospective circum- 
stances of our own country. With a land affluent beyond 
comparison in the minerals which control civilization and 
supply currency and the useful arts, wanting literally nothing 
in the means of subsistence, overstocked with the products 
of diversified agriculture, a workshop and a granary for the 
markets of the world, teeming with a population whose 
inventive genius and elastic industry as far exceed those of 
the older countries as our ratio of progress has distanced 
theirs, and, above all, vitalized by personal freedom, which 
is the parent of productive power, — the United States, and 
Massachusetts as a component part and for all her share, can 
bear and extinguish a debt of fifteen hundred millions with 
less suffering and less inconvenience than any other nation 
that has existed since the creation of man. 



MASSACHUSETTS AND THE WAR TAX, 15 

There is of course a limit to public credit. The extent to 
which we can safely pledge our own property and production 
and those of our children, cannot be very well defined. I 
suppose the point at which the debt of the country would 
cease to be secure and would begin to work national degen- 
eracy, would be reached whenever the debt should become so 
large that the productive industry of the country could not 
pay the interest and gradually sink the principal without 
stopping the general growtli and progress. I have no appre- 
hensions that we are destined to reach that point. First, 
then, we must have sufficient revenues to meet the interest 
and reduce the principal. No State can exist and advance 
without adhering to this principle. It was inscribed upon 
the columns of the administration of AVashington. At the 
commencement of our life, Hamilton, who brought order out 
of chaos, wished to see it incorporated as a fundamental 
maxim in the financial system of the United States, that the 
creation of a debt should always be accompanied with the 
means of extinguishment. This he regarded as the true se- 
cret for rendering public credit immortal. Our present neces- 
sities absolutely devote us to this principle. So soon as 
our revenues shall be seen to meet this requisition, whatever 
be the modes of taxation from which those revenues are de- 
rived, our securities will be in high favor and fe\'erish excite- 
ment will give way to general confidence ; and until we settle 
that point, bank officers may visit the Secretary of the Treas- 
ury, and he may return the visits, all in vain. How this is 
to be accomplished, it belongs to Congress to study and 
determine. Whatever system of taxation may be at first 
adopted, experience will doubtless suggest improvements 
which can only be ascertained by experiment. But for a 
stable credit, which shall leave men at liberty to pursue their 
business and labor to receive their rewards without the fear of 
disturbance, such measures of revenue must be as positively 
certain as they are unconditionally essential. And it is for 
the interest of every man, whether he be rich or poor, that 



16 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

such taxes be at once established and maintained. Hesita- 
tion, doubt, uncertainty in this respect, has ah^eady produced 
many of our financial troubles. For nine months we have 
been illustrating the language of the Eoman orator, whose 
statesmanlike philosophy, with slight diversion from its pro- 
vincial and literal application, may be repeated with practical 
reference to our present necessities of taxation : — 

" Nam in ceteris rehus, qmini venit calamitas, turn detrimentum 
accipitur ; at in vectigalihus, non solum adventus mali, sed etiam 
metus ipse, affert calamitatem." 

Second, this interest and sinking fund must be furnished 
without stopping the public growth. I do not believe we are 
to have that amount of debt wliich cannot be thus met. By 
the census of 1860 the value of real and personal property in 
the country is returned as somewhat over $17,000,000,000, 
and it appears that the increase since 1860 has been very 
much more than one hundred per cent. A sum, therefore, 
measured by one tenth to one fifth of the surplus or profits 
of this period of ten years, would liquidate the probable 
expenditures of the war. The property of the people of the 
loyal States alone is nearly $13,000,000,000. I am aware 
there is but little comfort to the tax-payer to be derived from 
this style of statement ; and yet it ought to nerve our faith 
and hope, to know, as well as we know anything, that if the 
authority of the Federal Government be re-established, our 
power be again asserted at home and abroad, the sea again 
be made to murmur with the keels of our commerce, and the 
vast and complicated machinery of our internal production be 
again set to its music, the fractional part of our annual in- 
crease will take care of the whole national debt before the 
child born to-day shall arrive at the age of citizenship. The 
property of the country is indeed the basis upon which its 
liabilities are upheld ; but not by that alone do I measure the 
certainty or time or facility of their payment. The property 
is the representative of production. And it is the production 



MASSACHUSETTS AND THE WAR TAX. 17 

of the people, it is their industry which moves on with such 
marvellous progression, it is the amazing vigor and versatility 
and self-development of their genius, which will bear a bur- 
den that would crush the pillars of any other government 
beside. 

In all these considerations Massachusetts is a party largely 
in interest. Whatever measures of taxation are to go into 
effect for the relief of the public treasury, the people of this 
Commonwealth, as a loyal and paying community, will be 
large partakers. They are offering their sons on the altar of 
the Constitution, and they expect to contribute their money 
and their industry in the common expenditures. But there 
are some aspects of these financial relations, in which we of 
Massachusetts will appear prominently and conspicuously 
beyond the lot of other States. I have barely time to allude 
to the topic. 

I think it just that 'we should not conceal the fact that the 
people of Massachusetts will be compelled, by the circum- 
stances of their domestic condition, to pay an amount of the 
.expenses of the war beyond their proportion of population. 
Any plan of internal taxation which is likely to be adopted 
will fall in a large degree upon the industry, upon the pro- 
duction and consumption, of the people ; in all of which there 
is no State which in proportion to its numbers presents so 
great a variety and luxury of life to be subjected to tribute, 
as this Commonwealth. The burdens of the debt cannot in 
any considerable measure be laid upon the lands of the peo- 
ple. It is not public policy that they should be. In Great 
Britain, where this matter of taxation has been reduced to 
almost a science, I understand that land pays directly not 
much more than one sixth of the whole tax. The condition 
of the real estate of a country is one of the standards of its 
civilization, and the stability and uniformity of its value must 
be maintained by all practicable legislation. It is therefore 
directly upon personal property, as one of the instruments of 
production, it is upon production and consumption, it is upon 

2 



18 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK, 

labor and enterprise, that the next twenty years of taxation 
will greatly depend. 

In these respects Massachusetts is destined to become a 
prominent contributor. I find, by inspecting the statistics of 
the census of 1860, so far as I have seen them, that while 
Massachusetts returns one-seventeenth part of the real estate 
of the loyal States, she actually shows one-eighth part of the 
whole personal estate. In this particular no State is her equal, 
except imperial New York, and even that State is absolutely 
but a little in advance of us, while proportionately she is far 
behind us. For while New York shows considerably more 
than double the real property of Massachusetts, her j^ersonal 
is in excess of ours by a mere fraction, large and populous as 
New York is.^ These are striking facts. They place us far 
in the van of other States in respect to our personal prop- 
erty ; and personal property is peculiarly an exponent of 
our industrial power, one of the chief instruments of our 
production, the tools of our industry and enterprise ; and 
these agencies of production and industry are to a great 
extent representatives of the proportion in which we shall be 
brought to bear the expenses of the war. 

If now you ask whether Massachusetts will not be called 
upon to sustain burdens beyond anything she has experienced 
in the last forty years, I answer, certainly she will. If then 
it be asked whether she can bear the load, I answer, undoubt- 
edly she can. I invoke the testimony of her history and 
experience. Her people in days gone by have illustrated 
both the ability and willingness to support government and 
liberty by every conceivable sacrifice. I cannot forget that 
within two years after the engagement which is commemo- 
rated by yonder shaft, a tax of £100,000 was laid upon the 
State, "when few had a competency and none could boast 
of abundance." I cannot overlook the fact that in 1780 the 

Real Estate. Personal Property. 

1 New York $1,069,658,080. $320,806,558. 

Massachusetts .... 475,413,165. 301,744,651. 



MASSACHUSETTS AND THE WAR TAX. 19 

debt of Massachusetts was $5,000,000, or one-fourtli part 
of the estimated valuation of her property. I cannot speak 
of the present war without being reminded that during the 
Revohition, and up to 1790, Massachusetts had actually paid 
towards the public expenses six and a half millions of 
dollars, and that this amount was afterward increased to ten 
millions by the incredible exertions of her small population. 
While I am discussing our present necessities, and the ade- 
quacy of our resources to meet them, a committee of the 
General Court of 1814 file in the area before me and report 
that, during the twenty-four years succeeding the adoption 
of the Constitution, the Federal treasury had received from 
Massachusetts alone thirty millions of dollars. And we are 
to remember that these amounts were paid when not only 
were our population and valuation comparatively small, but 
especially are we to remember that they were paid when the 
productive forces of the State were confined within the narrow 
limits of the old dispensation of her industry, which has since 
passed away and been succeeded by another and a better. 
Those great producers of the world, those great tax-payers of 
nations, — Arkwright and Crompton and Watt and Whitney, 
and their compeers in experimental science, — had not then 
waved their wand over the dead level of human employment. 
The field of our producing power presented at that period 
only the few original occupations of men, undistinguished and 
undiscriminating, plodding unconsciously towards that higher 
destiny of the division of labor which is blessing our day with 
a harvest of public wealth. Steam and water had not yet 
been tamed to fellowship with the click of the loom and the 
song of the spindle. Nevertheless, in aU the simplicity of 
their pursuits, and in all the poverty of their resources, the 
men of that period responded at length to every public claim, 
redeemed at length every public levy, and transmitted to us 
the record of their sacrifices witliout the taint of repudiation, 
and without so much as tlie blemish of non-payment. The 
heritage which they bequeathed to us, and which for half a 



20 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

century we have improved and embellished, this temple of 
our present Zion, ought now to fade away forever before our 
eyes, if with bold faith, if with exultant alacrity, we do not 
gather around it with all our hearts and devote all our 
resources to its defence. 

I have thus spoken of Massachusetts in the past, her con- 
tributions to the common liberties, when her financial abilities 
were thus restricted. But how shall I speak of her present 
capacity to grapple with the exigent demands of this crisis ? 
The glow of a new dispensation now pervades the domain of 
•her art and labor and commerce. Under the impulse im- 
parted by machinery and the useful arts, she has thrown off 
the identity of the past age, and mounted to an elevation of 
productive power and wealth that finds no parallel among 
American communities. Since the payment of the last 
national debt, such progress as before would have been the 
measure for ages has been concentrated into the space of a 
single generation. Within a period of thirty years the prop- 
erty of the State has been increased from $208,000,000 to 
$842,000,000, or more than fourfold. ^ This valuation is a 
standard measure of our industry, and the consideration of it 
in connection with the returns of our production will justly 
inspire the highest hope of the future. I have already said 
that the ability of the peo^^le to respond to taxation is to 
be estimated chiefly by their producing ability, and in this 
respect Massachusetts is in a condition to disregard all the 
croakings of the sad or the disaffected. Fortunately we can 
point to a well-established system of statistical returns of our 
industry, which has already furnished volumes of facts upon 
which the credit of our securities defies the scrutiny of the 
markets of the world. 

The first of these volumes was issued nearly twenty-five 
years ago. When Mr. Webster was in London in 1839, 
certain English capitalists, wlio had been applied to for 
money upon Massachusetts bonds, the first ever issued in a 

^ State valuation returns. 



MASSACHUSETTS AND THE WAR TAX. 21 

foreign market, came to him for information touching the 
credit of this parvenu on the stock list. " I went to my 
trunk," said ]\Ir. "Webster, '•' and took out an abstract of the 
official returns of the amount of the productive labor of 
Massachusetts. I put this into the hands of one of these 
inquirers, and told him to take it home and study it. He 
did so, and in two days returned and invested $200,000 in 
Massachusetts stock." 

If to-day the State desired to raise iive or ten millions 
upon six per cent stock at par, our last abstract of industry, 
published in 1855, would be the only agent we should need 
to negotiate the loan. With these returns in my hand, I 
plead our cause and our ability. If there be another com- 
munity of a million and a quarter of inhabitants which can 
place a catalogue of its industry by the side of this, expres- 
sive of such versatility of taleut and diversity of pursuit, — 
so blending utility with taste, and comfort with luxury, — so 
intermingling agriculture with what we term the useful arts, 
and stamping upon both the seal of a common interest 
and a common destiny, — so absolutely gigantic in some of 
its larger products, and in some of the smaller as deli- 
cate and attenuated as a woman's perceptions and a wo- 
man's fingers can make it, — so pervading the entire State, 
every town, village, hamlet, household, — I know not where 
it is to be found, certainly not on this hemisphere. Figures 
of speech are dwarfed by the figures of these statistics. They 
exhibit an annual specified production of labor in the State of 
three hundred millions of dollars ; and it was the opinion of 
the Secretary who compiled them that more accurate returns 
would swell the list to three hundred and fifty millions, or 
more than a million of dollars for every working day in the 
year. I have no doubt that similar returns in 1860 w-ould 
have exhibited an amount of productive labor in the State of 
FOUR HUNDRED MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. It has been Said that 
after the adoption of the Constitution, General Washington, 
at a dinner table in the midst of a party of friends, Northern 



22 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

and Southern, expatiated upon the great results he anticipated 
for the South under the new order of things, with her rich 
productions and f»rofitable exchanges, and, turning to one of 
his Northern guests, exclaimed, " But what will the North 
do ? " " We, sir," was the prompt reply, — " we will live by 
our wits." And the fulfilment of the prophetic reply has been 
consummated in our day, when a State that could be carved 
eight times out of the map of Virginia produces annually from 
her fields and workshops more than the ordinary value of the 
cotton crop of the United States, all counted from the ruins 
of Jamestown to the banks of the Sabine. It would have 
startled the Federal Convention of 1787 with a new sense of 
the grandeur of its work to have been told that, before all 
then born should pass to their sleep, the little Bay State, at 
that time without a spindle to respond to its waterfalls, 
should turn out in a year fifty millions in cotton and woollen 
fabrics ; that in 1850 it should produce one-sixth part of 
the aggregate manufactures of the Confederacy. Cotesworth 
Pinckney would have been amazed if he had been told that 
his State should so soon yield a cotton crop of thirty or forty 
millions ; but it would have been a greater shock to his nice 
sensibilities if he had been assured that Massachusetts would 
so soon give a boot and shoe crop of fifty millions. In a 
variety of phrase and comparison I might state the footings 
of the Massachusetts abstract by the side of the census re- 
turns of the United States in 1850, claiming for her one sixth 
of the iron works, two thirds of the fisheries, one sixth of the 
imports, and one tenth of the exports, one third of the whole 
ocean tonnage, and four fifths of the whale fisheries ; that 
while commercial circles are agitated every day to the year's 
end from New Orleans round to New York, in Liverpool, in 
London, by the quotations of cotton, there were a couple of 
hundred dealers in our own provincial Boston, whose quiet 
sales of raw and manufactured leather amounted to sixty 
millions. I might extend these facts and illustrations to the 
consumption of the State, and might show that there is not 



MASSACHUSETTS AND THE WAR TAX. 23 

probably on the face of the earth a community of equal 
numbers whose consuming habits and capacity make so large 
and constant demand upon every branch of production that 
yields sustenance or comfort or luxury. But I forbear. 
These are the glimpses of more extended views that might 
readily be furnished, but they are sufficient to indicate the 
variety and extent of our productive forces. It all comes 
from the division of our labor, the organization of our indus- 
try, the separation of our employments, the application of 
experimental science and the useful arts. It is this which 
makes our little territory imperial. The abstract to which I 
have referred discloses a wonderful multiplicity of occupations 
in every quarter of the State, united by constant and copious 
admixture of interests. It reveals production and exchange 
and consumption under almost every conceivable style and 
denomination of labor. The Commonwealth presents a scene 
of life and energy, of action and achievement, that possess all 
the interest of martial drama. Not an array has come upon 
the field, marshalled its squadrons, and contested its issues, 
each man ranging under his banner and responding to his 
bugle, with more of method and subordination than is dis- 
played by more than three hundred thousand men in IVIassa- 
chusetts as they come forth in the morning of every day, file 
off under their chosen pursuits, and lay down their trophies 
at nightfall upon the altars of home. Some three or four 
years since the Secretary of the State published a table of the 
numbers and occupations of all male persons in the Common- 
wealtli over fifteen years of age ; and I find that they number 
three hundred and thirty-four thousand, a third of a million, 
and are classified under one hundred and fifty different occu- 
pations. As the eye passes over these printed columns, and 
the imagination follows these men to their various posts of 
employment, — to the tranquil fields of agriculture, to the 
resounding workshops, to the busy marts of trade, to the 
mysterious and prolific sea, — to the ponderous machine that 
is measured by a hundred or a thousand horses, and the subtle 



24 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

conceptions of genius that work their honest ten hours in 
iron, brass, and copper, and never tire, — to the fine fashioning 
of rude woods, and the textiles wrought from the raw fibres 
of every laud, — in short, through the vast laboratory of 
mortal skill which is ever at its work transmuting air and 
water, the earth and all that can be enticed out of it, aye, and 
thought and reason itself, into productions for the market 
and supplies for mankind, — with what a comprehensive 
signification does our idea of the productive labor of Massa- 
chusetts become invested. 

Such resources, capacities, developments, — such accumu- 
lations of stores, supplies, and wealth, — these sources and 
springs of our power, — are now brought to the test of con- 
secration for the life of the Government. I can have no 
doubt that they will bear us securely, independently, trium- 
phantly, through the struggle. They are now interrupted, but 
they cannot be destroyed. They will shortly, and with re- 
newed vigor, again assert their supremacy over the competi- 
tions of other States, over the vicissitudes and adversities of 
human lot. They will bear us again to fortune. Soon again 
the Commonwealth will resound with the echoes of industry 
through all her borders, and spread the sails of her commerce, 
the pride of the seas. 

The bill now under consideration especially invites our 
attention to the aspect of our local finances. It levies what 
I concede to be a large tax, $1,800,000. The nearest ap- 
proximation to this which we have before had in the present 
generation was in 1857, and that was only half the present 
amount. Some idea of the practical application of this bill 
upon the people of the cities and towns may be derived from 
a document sent in to the House by the Secretary on Sat- 
urday last, showing the aggregate of taxes assessed in the 
State in 1861 ; from which it appears that the total amount 
taxed for county, city, and town purposes, the last year, was 
$7,300,000. Assuming the same amounts to be raised the 
present year by the several municipalities for local purposes, 



MASSACHUSETTS AND THE WAR TAX. 25 

it will be seen that this bill will add nearly twenty-five per 
cent more to the public taxes. The necessity for this is cer- 
tainly to be regretted ; but let the people consider that it is 
part and parcel of the necessities of the war. Of the amount 
proposed to be raised by this bill, $700,000 is for the 
national tax assumed by the State, and nearly $500,000 is 
for reimbursing to the towns their allowances to the fami- 
lies of volunteers. The people of Massachusetts need not be 
reminded that what amounts they expend in aid of the fami- 
lies of our brave volunteers will be recoined to them in the 
wealth and treasure of the heart. I do not forget that the 
towns have incurred and will continue to incur still other 
expenditures on the war account, which will not be included 
in the reimbursements from the State treasury. The whole 
subject is prolific in suggestions of local economy to the peo- 
ple of every city and town in the Commonwealth. Severe 
and persistent retrenchment in municipal expenses is a para- 
mount duty and necessity which will have to be learned in 
the next twelve months. I have requested the Secretary to 
furnish me with a statement of the aggregate tax which 
will be paid into the treasury by the fourteen cities in the 
State, upon the basis of this bill of $1,800,000 ; and I find 
their proportion to be $1,006,297. I submit whether the 
legislative authorities of these fourteen cities, whose ap- 
propriations for the year probably are yet to be made, cannot 
save a considerable proportion of this million by measures of 
local retrenchment ; and the several towns might doubtless 
measurably follow the example. Such considerations are 
now suggested to the home authorities by every motive of 
local duty and public patriotism, and if not heeded this year, 
they are very likely to be enforced the next by the several 
constituencies. 

I pass now for a moment to the general condition of the 
finances of the State, present and prospective. The war 
found many of the loyal States under very heavy liabilities. 
It found Massachusetts substantially without a debt. I do 



26 ADDKESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

not mean that we have not outstanding scrip to a large 
amount, at home and abroad; but its ultimate and certain 
extinguishment has been provided for by ways and means 
that will involve no necessity of much taxation. The condi- 
tion of our public liabilities at the present time may be easily 
and satisfactorily stated. First, we have loaned tlie scrip of 
the State to certain railroad corporations to the amount of 
$5,825,000 ; but for the whole of this amount the State 
holds securities, and these companies may be relied upon to 
pay the debt. From this estimate the Troy and Greenfield 
Eailroad is not excepted, because, the State having given its 
confidence to the enterprise, I feel bound to believe that this 
confidence has not been misplaced. Second, vfo. have issued 
upon the account of the Union Loan Fund of 1861, $2,217,500, 
which may be under the law carried up to $3,600,000 ; but 
this for the most part will be reimbursed to us by the 
General Government, a portion having already been re- 
funded. Third, we have outstanding scrip, issued from time 
to time upon sundry accounts of State charities and for other 
purposes, amounting to $1,589,000 ; and for these loans we 
have provided various extinguishment funds which will prob- 
ably in the aggregate be nearly or quite sufficient to redeem 
the debts at their maturity. Under this triad classifica- 
tion, then, I find our public debt may be stated ; and I find 
it also apparently provided for. Very likely there may be 
some deficiencies ; and it is not by any means improbable 
that our expenditures for national purposes and coast de- 
fences may not altogether fall within the legitimate rule of 
reimbursement by the United States. But such deficiencies 
cannot in any sense be a serious burden upon the State. 

With the amount which the present tax bill will supply, 
and with the added amounts of the annual revenue, we ad- 
vance in good condition up to January next. At that time I 
estimate that the State will have to provide for reimbursing 
the towns on account of military expenses, $2,500,000. Add 
to this, if you please, somewhat by conjecture, $1,000,000 



MASSACHUSETTS AND THE WAR TAX, 27 

to cover all deficiencies before referred to, all local mili- 
tary claims, and unforeseen contingencies, and you have 
made up a debt of $3,500,000. This amount can readily 
be raised within two or three years ; while the ordinary 
revenue, increased by the measures of taxation proposed by 
the Finance Committee upon the funds of sundry corpora- 
tions, will be amply sufficient to meet our current expenses, 
large as they are or are likely to be. It is not a forced con- 
clusion, therefore, to say that the present and prospective 
financial condition of the State is, so far as can now be seen, 
free of embarrassment or apprehension. I advise every man 
wlio holds a dollar of Massachusetts scrip, to continue to hold 
it and cherish it. Our credit is second to that of no State in 
the world. As if to gild the very edges of our scrip, we have 
during the present session provided that both interest and 
principal shall be paid in coin. It has been stated with 
historic sanction, that when, long ago, the little province of 
Holland owed a debt of $25,000,000, so just was her sense 
of national faith that the interest was always ready to the 
day, and whenever any portion of the principal was paid the 
public creditor received his money with tears. There is cer- 
tainly no good reason why the credit of Massachusetts should 
not now awaken similar emotions, provided only tlie sensibil- 
ities of the public creditors remain the same. 

Mr. Speaker, in these remarks I have confined myself to 
the financial relations of the war, and to our material ability 
to support the Government through this great crisis. The 
manner of conducting the war I have not discussed, because 
that rests in the discretion and conscience of those who 
have assumed the trust of guardians of our liberty. If 
through any fault of theirs the contest shall fall short of the 
sublime object which free and loyal men have at heart, the 
people will not be answerable. I cannot refrain from repeat- 
ing in this connection the language of Mr. Burke, uttered 
under circumstances of national peril and when appalling 
fancies disturbed his mind : — 



28 ADDKESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

"The people [of Massachusetts] look up to that Government 
which they obey, that they may be protected. They have in all 
things reposed an enduring, but not an unreflecting confidence. 
That confidence demands a full retm-n, and fixes a responsibility 
on the ministers entire and undivided. The people stand acquitted, 
if the war is not carried on in a manner suited to its objects. If 
the public honor is tarnished, if the public safety suffers any detri- 
ment, the ministers, not the people, are to answer it, and they 
alone. Its armies, its navies, are given to them without stint or 
restriction. Its treasures are poured out at their feet. Its con- 
stancy is ready to second all their efforts. They are not to fear a 
responsibility for acts of manly adventure. The responsibility 
which they are to dread is lest they should show themselves un- 
equal to the expectations of a brave people. There is a responsi- 
bility which attaches on them, from which the whole legitimate 
power of this country cannot absolve them ; there is a responsi- 
bility to conscience and to glory ; a responsibiUty to the existing 
world, and to that posterity which men of their eminence cannot 
avoid, for glory or for shame ; a responsibility to a tribunal at 
which not only ministers, but even nations themselves, must one 
day answer." 

But I indulge in no such apprehensions. I have an 
uncloubtiug faith in the honest man who is at the head of 
the Government, that he will be just to all parts of his coun- 
try, and not forgetful of the j^rinciples upon wliich he was 
borne into office. The people of Massachusetts believe in no 
object wortliy of exhausting their treasures and shedding 
their blood, less than the absolute and unconditional recovery 
of the authority of the Government, if that be possible. They 
believe that to be possible. And if,' in the necessary train 
for the accomplishment of that purpose, any tradition or cus- 
tom or relation or domestic institution stand as an obstacle, 
— whatever it may be, — let it be swept away. The national 
life is the principal ; all other things are incidents. The war 
will terminate ingloriously for us if we reach any other than 
honorable peace ; and honorable peace is to be conquered, 
not purchased or compromised. 



MASSACHUSETTS AND THE WAR TAX. 29 

It will come at last ; the war cannot continue any very- 
great length of time. And with peace, it is not difficult to 
foresee that humanity may assert her title to some share in 
the victory, though it be in the best of all the ways of human 
reform, by simple operation of natural causes rather than by 
prolonged violence. With peace, it is not difficult to foresee, 
as one of the consequences which may be evolved by Divine 
Providence out of this tragic epoch in the world's history, 
that Liberty — as we learn the word from the stately prose of 
Milton, from the serene benevolence of Washington, from the 
impetuous democracy of Jefferson — may vindicate her claim 
to the poet's numbers : — 

"More great than ever now, and more august, 
Now gloritied, she from her fires does rise ; 
Her widening paths on new foundations trust. 
And oj)ening into larger parts she flies." 



ADDRESS 

before the alumni, at amherst college, july 8, 1863. 

Gentlemen, Alumni of Amherst : 

I COULD not salute my honorable successor in the chair,^ 
without first felicitating you upon the occasion of your return 
to the scenes of our common attachment. Let us be hapj^y 
in these reunited numbers. Having tasted the chalice of 
life, in whatever mixture of success and labor and care it 
has pleased Providence to pass the cup to our lips, we come 
back to these academic festivities to sweeten once more its 
brim with the dews of the fountain and the grove. 

It is true we cannot bring before us our own Commence- 
ment day precisely as it was. Too many of our companions 
already sleep. Each class especially bears a memory of its 
own departed. I can speak for myself; hail, and farewell! 
Some of the teachers here are strange to us. Many of us 
recognize but few familiar faces among the people of the 
town, in which the manhood of our day has ripened into age, 
and the carnation of youth has given way to maturer beauty. 
Even these grounds and buildings have been so altered that 
we are almost compelled to inquire after the haunts of our 
boyhood. 

And yet all has not changed. The same outM^ard nature ; 
the queenly Connecticut, with its valley, fairest of the in- 
tervales of America ; yonder masses of morning and evening 
mist, converting here and there patches of the broad alluvion 
1 Hon. James Humphrey, of New York. 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE ALUMNI, AT AMHERST COLLEGE. 31 

into silvery lakes, until such time as the panoramic curtain 
lifts before the sun and the mirage rolls away, like many a 
dream of our life ; the solemn configuration of this mountain 
range, upon which to the observant student no twilight nor 
moonlight has ever fallen and been forgotten ; Holyoke, and 
Tom, and Sugar Loaf; the undimmed crown of an Amherst 
sunrise ; the benediction of an Amherst sunset ; this vast am- 
phitheatre, with its divine garniture, vital with traditions and 
histories, peopled with a noble race, I have sometimes fancied 
bowing its mountain heads and turning partly thither the 
sparkling cincture of its river as if in recognition of this 
seat of learning as the divinity of all the scene ; — these, as we 
remember them, and as they have been since the morning of 
the creation, all these are still here, and they welcome us to- 
day as in the bygone times of our classic walks and contem- 
plation. What returning and filial son, associating his alma 
mater with these inspiring memories of his youth, does not 
this morning respond to the rhapsody in which the sensitive 
poet upon a similar occasion gave vent to his emotions ? 

Ah, happy hills ! ah, pleasing shade ! 

Ah, fields beloved in vain ! 
Where once my careless boyhood strayed, 

A stranger yet to pain ! 
I feel the gales that from ye blow 

A momentary bliss below, 
As, waving fresh their gladsome wing, 

My weary soul they seem to soothe, 
And, redolent of joy and youth, 

To breathe a second spring. 

Each year as I revisit this institution I am more and more 
deeply impressed by the contrasts of its history. My thoughts 
run backward to the straits of tribulation through which tlie 
College was obliged to pass before she could assume a place 
in the community of letters ; to the conflict she was called to 
wage with principalities and powers, having no weapons for 
the unequal warfare, save justice, truth, and faith ; to her 
early but partial triumph ; to her protracted struggle with 



32 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

poverty at home and prejudice abroad ; sending forth in the 
first years but small classes, with some such emotions as are 
shared by the depressed mother who commits her son to the 
cold charities of the world, trusting in God that he may 
achieve a condition better than her own. Passing then from 
that experience to the present time, I find the College hand- 
somely endowed, the monuments of her Willistons and Hitch- 
cocks and Searses and Walkers and Tappans, halls and 
temples of the school, rising from year to year on every slope ; 
her cabinets affluent with contributions from every clime, and 
I may as well say from every age of the world ; a learned 
and efficient corps of teachers who wear their robes proudly 
and well ; and a band of students thronging her avenues and 
corridors who do not look as if they intend ever to apologize 
for having been born. We may fondly believe that the insti- 
tution has passed the epoch of heroic struggle, and that hence- 
forth, sustained by economy liere and liberality elsewhere, 
she shall multiply her departments and extend her influence 
until her chaplet shall wear a leaf plucked from every field 
of renown or virtue. 

And the results are proportionate to the sacrifice and the 
struggle. These doors are open alike to the sons of fortune 
and favor and to those of ruder and less cultured surround- 
ings ; and by the latter, quite as frequently at least as by the 
former, have the harvests of the world been reaped. We 
invite for our system and our College public observation and 
comparison. The nymph of modern learning is neither coy 
nor enshrouded in mystery; she is full-robed, stands out in 
the view of mankind, and mingles in the events of life. Our 
Arethusa follows no hidden channel of private luxury or 
pride to the objects of her love ; but rather her waters flow 
on with open current in the presence of the age, — in which 
all people may lave, from which all high causes may catch 
the cheer and sparkle of progress, for the healing of the 
nations, — enriching the coming and departing generations. 
The ancient mythology yields to modern action, and myth- 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE ALUMNI, AT AMHERST COLLEGE. 33 

history gives way to practical annals. The classic story 
wliich represents a perfect youth to have been lulled to per- 
petual sleep that he might be bathed in the eternal kisses of 
the moon — which called forth from the fine though capri- 
cious genius of Keats his " Endymion " and masterpiece — is 
reversed in our time and is reproduced only in its counter- 
part. The model youth no longer sleeps, whether for private 
luxury or public example ; but, binding on the helmet of 
learning, and the breastplate of a virtuous purpose, and the 
whole panoply of the educated and practical man, he enters 
the arena in which all have an equal chance : he tills the 
land, he teaches school, he preaches the Word, he heals the 
sick, he acts the counsellor, he operates a machine, he writes 
books, he fights battles, he governs States, he is radical, he 
is conservative, he guides and tempers the practicalities of 
his public career by the sweet counsel of his private studies ; 
and when called to make his fellowship with the dead, he 
leaves behind him the track of a hero and a man. And who 
shall say that for actors in all this social scene and social des- 
tiny, the institution here present has not largely and richly 
contributed ? Cast your eyes around, and you behold the 
graduates of your College thickly scattered among all the 
high enterprises, the useful and the fine arts, the contempla- 
tive literatures, the beneficent humanities, the veiled and the 
unveiled glories of this and a better life. I hear of them afar 
teaching original languages, enlarging the boundaries of philo- 
logical science among the mosques and mountains and palm- 
trees, placing our local signet upon the literary standard of 
tlie Orient, and sending back the trophies of their research to 
our alcoves and cabinets, where they repose to-day. I count 
them to you everywhere spoken of, acknowledged, and felt 
among the forces and combinations that mould and guide ' 
American States, — entering the halls of the national council 
with the mace before them, — dressed in ermine, dispensing 
law and justice with ability unsurpassed,. — by their power and 
individuality having already placed the pulpit of this land 

3 



34 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

in advance of all others beside, — associating the type and 
impression of this school with the fairest structures and high- 
est honors of our civil polity, — and, while I am speaking, 
leading regiments in the field and bearing forward the eagles 
of the Union to victory in the sublime civil strife that is 
upon us. Surely, my fellow-students, wherever they are, in 
large numbers, in peace or war, among the living or the dead, 
they have annals and garlands for us, to illustrate tlie insti- 
tution whose name they bear. I feel prepared to say that 
Amherst has attained indemnity for the past and security for 
the future. Let us give her the filial all-hail. Salve, magna 

PARENS ! 

Gentlemen, a little beyond the period usually allotted to a 
generation of men has elapsed since our first class went forth 
from these halls. In all this time the number of those who 
have graduated here is one thousand five hundred. This, so 
far, is certainly an auspicious result. At the expiration of 
two hundred years from the foundation of Harvard, five thou- 
sand four hundred had received her diploma. In numbers, 
therefore, and for her age in years, Amherst has a title to the 
name of a public benefactor. Such a title, thus earned, you 
will appreciate if you think for a moment of the imperishable 
nature of mental influences. Applied to the mind and culture 
of a nation, which so manifestly makes and marks its history 
and transmits its names from age to age, we readily apprehend 
the truth that it is not its commerce or fields or fleets that 
can crown it with the assurance of immortal fame ; it is 
rather its genius, its mental essence, its conception of truth 
and beauty and freedom and glory, that is borne in the 
written and spoken word to the latest time. I am afraid 
Cicero is a little too didactic for these days of martial events, 
biit he uttered a significant truth for nations and individuals 
in declaring that but for the " Iliad " the fame of Achilles 
would not have been handed down through the ages. And 
so it is the subtle and poetic mind of Greece — surviving 
the oblivion which has overtaken achievements enough to 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE ALUMNI, AT AMHERST COLLEGE. 35 

make a thousand histories since her day ; received this 
hour as lovingly in the schools of America as when it first 
burst upon that early civilization in the East, above even her 
arms and works of outward grandeur — which possesses a 
charmed life that cannot decay. Descending from nations to 
individuals, and directing our attention to the leaders of mind 
who have appeared at intervals in the centuries, we readily 
recognize the fact that the intellectual creations of Plato and 
TuUy, of Bacon and Shakespeare, of Milton and Burke, first 
awakening the kindred inspiration of scholars and thoughtful 
men, thence passing into the common understanding and 
common language of the world, acquire at last a range and 
circuit of power that can be measured by no finite or mortal 
standard. Such masters touch the responsive chord in the 
heart of the race; they stir into action the elements of human 
being as they exist in all countries and in all times ; and thus 
they themselves become ubiquitous and immortal. They 
realize to us the wish of the Roman orator, that a man so 
accomplished as Hortensius might never die. Passing from 
these high examples to other gradations of cultivated intel- 
lect, to such positions as the greater number of educated men 
must be content to hold, we behold them also exercising the 
same exalted prerogative ; in humbler sphere, it is true, but 
with like quality of effect, — npon the table-land instead of 
the mountain top, but with the same boundless horizon. A 
pebble dropped in mid ocean is felt on the farthest shore ; 
and thougli this is a less striking manifestation of power than 
an earthquake which ingulfs a city or a navy, yet the same 
law of physical disturbance gives effect to both occurrences. 
Consider now the case of a thousand men trained in the 
development and discipline of liberal studies ; follow them as 
they go into all states, all positions, all walks in life ; behold 
some advancing till they become guides in statesmanship and 
administration, in whom large numbers, perhaps generations, 
place their trust ; see others mounting to the serenest altitudes 
of a clergyman's empire, which comprises our entire social 



36 ADDEESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

condition, from " the proud man's contumely " to the pathos 
of a child ; look yet further to the large multitude of others, 
whether solacing the heart of humanity by noble words and 
deeds, or dispensing instruction to a rising race, or speaking a 
new liope in the ear of labor, or revolutionizing the tables of 
mortality, or adding higher intelligence and higher honor to 
commerce, — in whatever calling and place, all and everywhere 
diffusing over the scene in which they move, and therefore 
diffusing over the fields of time, imperishable thoughts, ideals, 
forms of moral excellence, of purest truth, of sweetest art, of 
generous patriotism, of genuine philanthropy, of Divine Love, 
— all and everywhere quoted, some by a continent, some by 
a state, others by a town, — all and everywhere reproducing 
themselves in the next generation by the influence they have 
upon their own, so that after death their lives are renewed to 
the end of the world. All, my friends, this mental influence, 
whether of the individual educated man or of the college that 
sends him forth on his mission, is an eternity. 

" On, like tlie comet's way through infinite space, 
Stretches the long unti'avelled path of light, 
Into the depth of ages ; we maj^ trace. 
Afar, the brightening glory of its flight, 
Till the receding rays are lost to human sight." 

Yes, companions, " lost to human sight ; " not lost to the 
Omniscient Eye, not lost in the august reckoning in \vhich 
institutions and persons will be called to account, not lost in 
the distribution of palms, not lost in the award of crowns 
and jewels. 

Gentlemen, our anniversary comes to us for the third time 
amid general convulsion. Our reflections, which under other 
circumstances would have been mostly those of merely per- 
sonal fellowship, are toned and shaded by the shifting scenes 
of the national drama. The groves and fountains and temples, 
all the grand old histories and dreamy mythologies, the stately 
Eoman and the picture Greek, with which the returning 
alumnus would gladly associate the festive hours, are now to 



ADDEESS BEFORE THE ALUMNI, AT AMHERST COLLEGE. 37 

US chiefly sources of inspiration in the support of our dis- 
tressed country. If I were looking for the truest conceptions 
of loyalty and freedom, I could not pass by the colleges of 
New England. If by possibility there can be extenuation for 
him wlio, in the engrossments of mere gain or mere ambition, 
has learned the way to give one half of his heart to his 
country and the other to its enemies, no door of pardon for 
such a crime is open to him who goes from the privileges of 
liberal studies to the transcendent responsibilities of present 
action. From civilization in its dawn, communicated to us 
by yonder library ; from the exalted sentiments of classic and 
heroic authors, among the most manly ; from the lessons 
thundered in our ears by the great orators, dear to every 
enlightened student ; from the old and the middle ages, that 
are swept by his memory ; from the philosophy of the mind, 
and from the teachings of his holy religion, — one voice only 
at this moment emerges ; it is the voice of the congregated 
past, it is the voice of the shades of the mighty dead, — 

Be thou TRUE, AND FAITHFUL, AND VALIANT FOR THE PUBLIC 

LIBERTIES. Let others, if they will, bow their heads before 
adverse reports when they come from the field ; the patriot 
scholar, enlightened, inspired, — whether the tidings come 
from Fredericksburg or Gettysburg or Vicksburg, — fixes a 
steady gaze upon the triumph of his principles. Let others, 
if they will, disguise disloyalty with superstition, and give 
up all for lost when " the birds of wide-spread wing fly to 
the left, towards the darkening west," — though now, thank 
Heaven, they all " fly to the right, towards the sun and the 
morning," — the patriot student turns his Homer to better 
use ; he invokes the spirit of the chivalric Hector, 

" And asks no omen but his country's cause." 

And we may well take pride in being enabled to say, that 
from the origin of this Government to the present hour the 
educated men of the country have taken a lead in organizing 
and upholding republican liberty. I am not to repeat to you 



38 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

the thrice-told tale of the Eevolution, emblazoned by such 
graduates as Otis, and two Adamses, and Warren, and Han- 
cock, and Witherspoon, of coequal fame. Sufficient unto us 
are the illustrations of our own day ; and in this great 
struggle I call you to witness the conduct of our own gallant 
boys. Nearly or quite one hundred of our undergraduates, 
or more than one quarter of the whole number, have within 
the two past years enlisted in the military service. How 
many of tlie graduates of the College are in the war I know 
not, but the number is large. The youths of Amherst are not 
second to any senior institution in the numerical force or the 
intelligent patriotism or the irresistible valor with which they 
bear up the radiant flag. They are on every field. While 
you are trimming the lamp, they are lighting their camp 
fires ; while you preach truth and freedom, they practise and 
defend it ; while you are threading the academic walks, they 
are marching along the margin of the valley of the shadow of 
death. In exposure or sickness or battle they do not forget 
these scenes of their love ; let us not forget them. If they 
shall fall, we will reclaim their ashes if we can ; but if other- 
wise it must be, " the most precious tears are those with 
which heaven bedews the unburied head of a soldier." 

In the autumn of 1861 it was my privilege, as the mouth- 
piece of the ladies of the city in which I reside, to present to 
the Twenty-first Massachusetts their colors. Borne through 
many appalling vicissitudes, riddled by shot and stained with 
blood at Eoanoke, and Newbern, and in other hard-fought 
conflicts, they received their last and enduring baptism at 
Fredericksburg, and have now been assigned a place in one 
of the rooms of the State House, where they may henceforth 
be seen. He who received the standard from my hands, 
after commanding the regiment in some of the most sangui- 
nary engagements of the war, and winning by his equal valor 
and discretion unfading laurels, honors us by his presence 
to-day, and affords me the opportunity of extending your 
greeting and mine to Colonel and Professor Clark. Another 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE ALUMNI, AT AMHERST COLLEGE. 39 

fair son of Amherst, in the dew of his youth, buoyant with the 
enthusiasm of a Christian hero, was present upon the occasion 
to which I have alluded. Side by side with Clark, young 
Stearns ^ went to the crest of battle, and fell in the arms 
of victory. Eecorded honors cluster over his grave, and the 
academic shades of Amherst in which his dust reposes have 
been consecrated for ever and ever to the country for whose 
government and liberty he laid down his life. 

1 Adjutant Stearns, son of the President of the College, and who fell in 
the battle at Newbern. 



REMARKS 

on the occasion of the reception of the twenty-first massachu- 
setts regisient by the citizens of worcester, feb. 3, 1864. 

Mr. Mayor, Officers and Men of the Twenty^-first, and 
Fellow-Citizens : 

Ox the 23d day of August, 1861, one of the sweetest and 
brightest of our skies, when the sun was descending behind the 
curtain of these Western hills, the Twenty-first Eegiment was 
drawn up in line on yonder camp ground to receive its regi- 
mental colors and the public greeting of the vast assemblage 
which had convened to bid them liail and farewell. More 
than a thousand men, freshly from their homes in Worcester 
and Hampden and Franklin and Berkshire, stood expectant 
for the last word of our fraternal sympathy and the bugle- 
note of their departure. The ceremony was quickly over ; 
they filed through our streets, and were lost to our sight until 
to-day. 

But in the interval we have heard from them, Massachu- 
setts has heard from them, the world has heard from them ; — 
on the tedious voyage, on the long inarches, amid the silent 
watches and camp fires, in the hospital, on the picket, in 
many a skirmish, in nine pitched battles, — Eoanoke, New- 
bern, Camden, Bull Eun 2d, Chantilly, South Mountain, 
Antietam, Fredericksburg, Knoxville, — wherever the flag has 
called them, wherever the enemy of their country could be 
found, wherever God has opened the portals of glory to wel- 
come the soldier of liberty. 



KECEPTION OF THE TWENTY-FIRST MASS. REGIMENT. 41 

And now, fellow-citizens, follow these men from their camp 
in Worcester to Annapolis, to North Carolina, back to Vir- 
ginia, to Maryland, to Tennessee, through four States in 
rebellion, — everywhere patient, enduring, triumphant ; never 
despairing of their country, never dishonoring their States 
never losing their flag; all and everywhere the same, — at 
the morning drum-beat, in the shock of battle, in the funeral 
procession to the bed of a comrade's rest ; — remember that all 
but twenty-four have re-enlisted to see the end of the war and 
the end of its cause, and tell me if they do not make their 
history on their march and carry it with them, if their 
reward is not in all your hearts, and if their praise shall not 
be known and heard on earth till it shall merge in the reveille 
of the resurrection. 

And now they return to us. But of all whom I had the 
honor to address two years and a half ago, only one-fourth 
part are here. In the history of the wars of Europe we read 
of the decimation of armies. This war, between men of the 
same race and of the same national fraternity, tells a sadder 
story than that. Of those who went forth from Worcester as 
members of the Twenty-first, ten officers have passed to their 
sleep. One hundred and sixty enlisted men have, while in 
service, transferred their names to the roster of another life. 
Three hundred men have fallen by wounds which proved not 
to be mortal. Forty men have been taken prisoners, — only 
forty, for these men prefer not to be captured. Count those 
disabled, discharged, worn out, then add the gallant present, 
and the tale of the Twenty-first is completed. But not with- 
out a word for those who sleep in death. Ye blessed men, of 
enviable lot ! The dews of heaven shall keep ever verdant 
the turf that covers your ensanguined dust ! Earth has no 
higher honor, music no tenderer dirge, freedom no loftier 
hallelujah, than those which accompany your names to im- 
mortality. 

Of the officers to whose fate I referred. Adjutant Stearns 
fell at Newbern, Lieutenant Holbrook at Antietam ; all the 



42 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

others, save one killed by accident and one who died by 
disease, — Lieutenant-Colonel Eice, Captain Frazer, Captain 
Kelton, Lieutenant Bemis, Lieutenant Hill, Lieutenant Beck- 
with, — were killed in the slaughter of Chantilly, where, 
almost without any general commander at all, the Union boys 
of the ranks saved the capital from the hands of the enemy. 

Adjutant Stearns is not more lastingly embalmed in the 
hearts of the regiment than in the heart of all patriotism and 
all piety. Late in the afternoon of the 20th of July, 1861, 
when the dismal tidings of the first Bull Eun vibrated over 
the wires through the towns of Massachusetts, Clark and 
Stearns, the one a professor and the other a student in the 
College at Amherst, joined their hands and united their oaths 
over the disaster, and within six hours they turned the keys 
of their doors on the outside, and gave themselves to the 
bloody fortunes of the Union. 

The living is here to speak for himself ; I speak only for the 
dead. Stearns was in the dew of his youth, in the enthusiasm 
of the love of God, of his country, of human nature. He fell 
at Newbern, in the victory of your arms. No purer spirit 
has been added to the sublime oblation of war. In kindness, 
in justice to his father, my friend, and in tender respect for 
his own heroic sacrifice on the altar to which we all may come 
at last, I offer him the ineffectual tribute of my farewell. 

" Blest youth ! regardful of tliy doom. 
Aerial hands shall build thy tomb, 

With shadowy trophies crown'd ; 
Whilst Honor, bathed in tears, shall rove. 
To sigh thy name through every grove, 

And call her heroes round." 

Lieutenant-Colonel Eice is well remembered in this county 
of Worcester. He was, I believe, an honorable mechanic 
in the town of Ashburnham. He long commanded as Colonel 
our old Ninth Eegiment of the volunteer militia, and was 
one of those representative military men who served in time 
of peace to keep up the organization and preparation for the 



RECEPTION OF THE TWENTY-FIRST MASS. REGIMENT. 43 

time of war. And when the war blast came, without pride 
of rank, without hesitation, counting the cost, and knowing 
the venture, he stepped forth from his peaceful pursuits and 
gave up his life that his country might live. 

Men of the Twenty-first! on the day in August, 1861, 
already alluded to, in behalf of the women who now fill 
these galleries, I iianded to you your colors. I tlien said 
to you, " Eeverence this flag in the hour of security, and 
honor it in the clustering battle." Brave men, you promised 
to do it, and you have kept your pledge. The thunders of 
Eoanoke and Newbern, the horrors of Chantilly and Freder- 
icksburg, the blazing glories of Antietam and Knoxville, — 
the soil of four States stained by your blood, — the evidence 
of Burnside and Eeno and Magi and Clark and Hawkes, — 
the spirits of the unsheeted dead you have left in rude graves 
behind you, whispering in your ears to-day from the galleries 
of the sky, — your own presence here, — this color-bearer 
before me [Sergeant Plunkett], whose plucky soul still marches 
on custodian of the flag, — these streets, this hall, crowded to 
honor and bless the present and to revere the departed, — all, 
all bear a testimony as conspicuous and enduring as if lettered 
over the heavens from pole to anti-pole, that you have kept 
your pledge. No further proof is wanted, but one other proof 
remains. It is your own dear, tattered, blood-stained flag ! 

Brave men of the Twenty-first, behold your flag ! It has 
conducted you through the storm and fire and smoke and 
blood of battle ; cheer it now that it has left you and taken 
its place in history. Look upon it, ye men and women of 
Worcester, — behold it riddled with ball and bullet in seven 
memorable conflicts, beginning with Eoanoke and ending 
with Antietam, — then look again, and behold the ghastly 
rents made by the shell at Fredericksburg, and see the stripes 
of red and white merged in crimson by the blood of the fallen 
brave ! Look upon it, ye who gave it, and strew the paths of 
these brave boys with the beauty and fragrance of flowers ! 
Look upon it, ye men of Worcester, who have done but little 



44 ADDEESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

and could have done more, and ye who have done much and 
could do no more, — look upon it, according to your con- 
science, with satisfaction or wdth repentance, — and resolve 
that henceforth the life of the Republic shall engross our hearts, 
our fortunes, and, if need be, our blood and our lives. Look 
upon it. Colonel Pickett and men of the Twenty-fifth, and 
behold what reward awaits you when the residue of your 
great re-enlistraent shall come home and be received in tliis 
heart of Massachusetts. Look upon it, ye men of tlie Fifty- 
seventh, and behold what exalted honor is in store for those 
who go forth for Union and Liberty and Humanity. 

And now, Mr. Mayor, men of tlie Twenty-first, and fellow- 
citizens, let us not forget our destiny and our dependence. 
For the approaching end, and for the result, already apparent, 
which shall thrill the heart of humanity to the end of time, 
not unto ourselves, but unto Thee, Almighty God of our 
fathers, shall be all the praise, forever and forevermore ! 



THE EELATIONS OF THE EDUCATED MAN" WITH 
AMEEICAN NATIONALITY. 

ADDRESS BEFORE TUE LITERARY SOCIETIES OF WU.LIAMS COLLEGE, 
AUG. 1, 1864. 

We have no choice of theme. If we seek a thesis for this 
hour in the circles of thought wont to he our privilege and 
our charm, — among the curiosities of literature or abstract 
speculation, or in the ages of men and events remote from 
our grasp, and yet hitherto all the more attractive for the dim 
twilight through which the scholar followed them up to the 
sources of their life and power, — it is in vain, and our heart 
comes back to this our own America, to this the day of her 
trial, and goes out into all the scene of her epic action. The 
train of our reflections is peremptory. Isolated by the decrees 
of Providence, shut out from the galleries of history to the 
necessity of vindicating our own, compelled to drop the tone 
of exultation and to hold glory and hope in abeyance, until 
— yeoman, student, and soldier alike — we fight our way 
back to our imperiality, our contemplations are shaped and 
controlled by our situation. And yet let not your speech 
or mine be of a lost Pleiad, or an expiring nation, or Capi- 
toline ruins, or unbelief, or despair. You who are about to 
pass through the gateway of the school to a larger respon- 
sibility and action more grand, you who remain a little longer 
for preparation more ample, and those of us who have preceded 
you many years, — all of us, — all of us, — let our thought be 
hopeful, let our speech to others give the sound of a conscious- 
ness of national life to be continued and renewed, of victories 



46 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

yet to be won, of a future that shall challenge nations to the 
prize, whether of fleets or armies or peace or humanity. 
That is the only omen for us. That is the only picture for a 
student, — in the darkest and most uncertain day, if govern- 
ment and prophecy and arms seem to fail, still let him 
gaze upon that picture and no other ; animum pictura pascit 
inani. 

We are here, then, to give the passing hour to the rela- 
tions OF THE EDUCATED MAN TO AMERICAN NATIONALITY. I 
might speak of the country, or national life, but I use rather 
NATIONALITY as comprehending the whole, — not as a rhapsody 
or sentimentality, but as comprising the inward sentiment and 
the outward form of all that which most interests us to-day. 

1. In the first place, think how great a thing a nation 
is. Do not regard it as only the aggregate of individuals, 
but try to apprehend it as a power and a life, an agency, 
the agency and instrumentality among the providences of 
God and the designs of his glory. We are indeed a part of 
it, but only for a moment. We live not our lives merely, but 
we live a state of consciousness that runs back and prefigures 
among the eternities, blending with the ages past and bidding 
the next ones hail. Continental geography is its handmaid, 
but not its name, and would be nothing without it ; the 
Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, from their frozen source, 
over all their majestic flow, till they mingle with the outer 
world, are obscure streams save as they waft the parental 
idea and promote the parental renown. These mountain 
ridges, gulfs, bays, which divide us and yet unite us, whose 
prodigal beauties and profitable commerce make a part of our 
boast, our literature, our song, might as well reclaim their 
primeval solitudes, if they respond to no common heart, no 
one sweet jurisdiction, no one protective flag. This mixture 
of races, source of our invigoration, elasticity, and stimulation 
beyond what has been seen on the globe, — let them dissolve 
and revert to the fogs of Great Britain, the factions of Ger- 
many, the snows of Swedeland and Norway, if for them. 



THE RELATIONS OF THE EDUCATED MAN, ETC. 47 

and for us we are to have no common chord, no national 
melody. 

The organism of a nation ! It infolds and blesses races ; it 
perpetuates traditions, ideas, examples, principles ; it is full 
of the germs of the growth of cities, great industries and 
prosperities ; it vibrates to the step of thronging masses of 
men who march like an organized army to culture and power; 
it is sealed to the purposes of God's creation by temples and 
schools, social aesthetics, the purities and the beatitudes on 
earth, the ties which connect generations, the life of poetry 
and art, the sacred custody of the ashes of the dead, the 
assurances of progress which shall encircle the next age with 
the fruit and sliade of a better condition, the guardianship of 
worship which since the harp of the Orient was strung to the 
cadences of national success and woe has joined the comfort 
of patriotism to the solace of religion ; it is the sleepless 
sentinel of life and liberty and property to coming and going 
millions ; it is the schoolhouse of rising generations ; it is 
the august arbiter of justice ; it is the peaceful angel of our 
tastes and humanities ; it is government, without which, in 
obeyed and felt majesty, there is no development for man, no 
mission for woman, no sleep for children. How sublime the 
life of a nation ! and how, according to modern experience 
and conception, it is the offspring of the continuity of the 
centuries. It is the treasury of histories. If it fall, the 
inspirations of vast annals perish with it ; for national life is 
the illuminated chain connecting all annals with the popula- 
tions and welfares to come. It is a great loss to lose a 
country. In this stage of the world we cannot afford any- 
where to begin anew. The preservation of the past — of the 
past realized, of our own past — is essential to the hopes of 
the future. There can be no such death as the death of 
the animating, the teaching, the inspiring history of a nation ; 
and yet, saddest of catastrophes, when a country dies, its 
annals lose their mission, its historic unities pass away, afloat 
on the viewless air ; men will continue to play with them as 



48 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

antiquaries for their amusement, but with the loss of their 
home and abiding-place, their life and instruction are gone 
forever. 

For the extinction of its historical lessons, traditions, exhil- 
arations, it matters not much whether a nation perish outright, 
ingulfed by an earthquake, undermined by rapid decay, or 
disappear by disintegration and new constructions. The 
greatest gap, the most ghastly chasm in the progressions of 
the race, comes of the rupture of historical connections. The 
moment national existence terminates, the philosophy of its 
examples becomes shadowy, fabulous, lost. When Sparta 
and Athens disappeared from the map like a dream, how 
surely and how quickly the pall of uncertainty dropped on 
the mighty power of their lesson. Mist and darkness, myth 
and fable, followed in their track. Eead Herodotus and 
Plutarch and Grote, and compare them with all the writers, 
for the instructions of that day ; observe what doubt hangs over 
the whole scene, — as to who fought those battles and how, 
as to who wrote many of those orations and songs, as to who 
lived and led those states. The practical connection is lost ; 
and for most of the good that comes to the consummation 
of man and the glory of God, with the departure of Greece 
from the list of nations living her lessons and traditions 
departed also. If you doubt tliis, which I assert as a sad 
truth, try it among your earliest efforts of public oratory ; 
draw your historical parallels from Greece, or Eome, or tlie 
Italy of somewhat later date but now gone to the shades, and 
then take your illustrations from England or America ; and 
while your auditory will yawn and sleep over the former, they 
will give to the latter open ears, rapt and suffused eyes. 
Washington went to Philadelphia in 1787 to preside over the 
Constitutional Convention, carrying a synopsis of the ancient 
republics, his own preparation and study ; but there is no 
evidence that in all the long session he ever unrolled his 
manuscript. And so it is and will be. When you extinguish 
a nationality, you commit to forgetfulness the guides of civ- 



THE RELATIONS OF THE EDUCATED MAN, ETC. 49 

ilization ; you quench the lights of a common literature ; the 
luminaries which liave conducted generations of men to accu- 
mulative fame become obscured ; the masters of thought are 
jostled out of their living sanction and lie evermore in the 
haze which increases as it gathers over a lost people. 

If you were to break up the union of Great Britain, the 
worst of all calamities would be that you would dissolve the 
spell of names wliich have flamed in all the heavens ; a hun- 
dred years would not elapse before Chatham and Burke and 
Pitt and Canning, and their great compeers, would cease to 
be felt as living authorities, would have no home-bound 
charm, no awful sanction of empire or country, and would 
speak to the hereafter with voices scarcely more audible 
than those which echo from her dark-aged abbeys. If you 
break up the union of America, that lettered glory of the 
Eevolutionary period which has stimulated three genera- 
tions, that learning and eloquence of the constructive period 
which followed, that valor of fathers and sous which has 
sheeted so many a State and sea with flame, that honor of 
our neutrality and dignity of our diplomacy, that wealth 
of record and biography and legend, that continuous vic- 
tory of peace which has set our stars as signets on every 
mountain, valley, or ocean, that renown of the wise men, 
that wisdom of Franklin and Jefferson and Hamilton and 
Madison and Adams and Webster, in which we live each day 
and rise to heroic purpose, — before this class now gradu- 
ating should go to its sleep, these, with all their associate 
values and attractions, would pass away from gaze and love, 
and the image of Washington, the great and venerable, 
would be veiled forever and forever. 

" The great historical hour " menacing such a catastrophe 
is upon us. The mission of some of you begins while the 
great shadow is passing over us. Never had the heart of 
youth such fascination before it for a solemn study and a 
happy self-sacrifice and a radiant life. The classic spirits of 
ancient and modern days combine to light your path and to 

4 



50 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

inspire your conduct. That rich legacy which the early 
Quincy, dying on shipboard under our Eastern projecting 
headland, in the first hour of his country's agony, bequeathed 
to the infant son, who, almost a century later, and only last 
week, took the elegiac honors of Harvard, — how fit an 
inheritance for every boy of the free North in this day of 
fate : — 

" I give to my son, when he shall arrive to the age of fifteen 
years, Algernon Sidney's Works, John Locke's Works, Lord 
Bacon's Works, Gordon's Tacitus, Cato's Letters. May the spirit 
of Liberty rest upon him ! " 

2. In the next place, as you step forth to action, consider 
American nationality in its unity and in its diversity. 

And first, its unity. Never before has any nation exhibited 
such apparent unity and design in the relations of Providence 
and historic development. Eecall the growth and consolida- 
tion of other empires, and observe over what broad fields of 
time they range, and with how little of rounded completion 
or connection. The historical threads which connect the past 
with the present of England or France run in confusion of 
inextricable maze over a thousand years ; and it has seemed 
to me that there is more of ingenuity than good sense in the 
modern theory which attempts to trace through all these 
convolutions any appreciable current of unifying processes, as 
if one of the stages had a palpable connection of logic or 
sequence with a remote century preceding or following. At 
all events, the periods are too long, there is too much mystery 
and monkery and darkness over them all, too many petty 
squabbles and great strifes without sufficient cause or intel- 
ligible result, too much that seems accidental, too many 
reversals of policies and epochs, to make it easy for you or 
me to take in the idea of the rational, logical, distinct growth 
of a national unity from Alfred or Charlemagne until now. 
More conspicuous and inferential, — in part, perhaps, because 
more recent, — certainly more striking and impressive, is the 



THE EELATIONS OF THE EDUCATED MAN, ETC. 51 

idea of causation and unity running through our national life. 
There appears to be a marvellous beauty of design from our 
beginning. God kept America unknown to Europe until old 
things should have passed away and all things become new. 
This nationality was not to be vexed by the old schoolmen, 
their alchemy and astrology, their pursuit after the philoso- 
pher's stone, their outlawry of the arts and inventions which 
elevate the race, their cruelties and impracticabilities. The 
generations devoted to " trimming the lamps of ancient sepul- 
chres" were to go to their burial before the Western nationality 
should be born. A new leader was to appear, and a new 
philosophy, to usher in the eras of which we were to become 
at once partakers and ultimately the masters. Bacon, rising 
in full-orbed splendor, and America, mounting in the hori- 
zon, — these were to be contemporaneous occurrences. The 
one was to furnish the world with instructions and examples 
as much more magical in their effect than anything preced- 
ing, as the vitalized English of John Bunyan surpasses the 
Latin mockeries of St. Peter's and the Vatican ; the other 
was to accompany the new dispensation on its mission and 
conduct it to its divine results. And it has sometimes seemed 
to me, as one of the coincidences of history which imply a 
Providence, that the same year (1620) which witnessed the 
conclusion of one of Bacon's great works, which more than any 
other of them all and great was destined to turn the current 
of the human mind to the achievement of that social progress 
of which we more than any people are sharing the benefits, 
was also witness of the establishment on the shores of this 
continent of a new political power in the earth, — another 
nationality, — whose destiny it lias been to apply and expand 
his lessons with results that cast all the experience of former 
time into an eclipse. If that original founder of our opening 
era could have foreseen how his instructions would, ere the 
lapse of two centuries, spread their roots over a country then 
reposing in the sleep of unawakened nature, his prescient 
genius would have anticipated the lyric prophecy of Bishop 



52 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

Berkeley, uttered a century later at Newport, — our talisman, 

our watchword of America, — 

' ' There shall be sung another golden age, 
The rise of empiue and of arts." 

And so our nationality started, out of the unities of Provi- 
dence, to accept and develop the new and wise philosophy 
which was to apply social progress to the welfare and freedom 
of mankind. And so it has proceeded and succeeded. It has 
made the age of industry an age of power ; has crossed all 
mountains and all seas ; has borne our influence to the Ganges 
and the Amazon and the Andes ; has made California and 
Columbia and Australia to glow in our diadem ; has estab- 
lished the electric current from the Atlantic to the Pacific ; 
has furnished ships and steam-engines for the Sultan and the 
Czar ; has taught the world to build iron-clads, and to destroy 
them ; has consecrated genius and art to a million-handed 
machinery, which drawls out the treasures of the earth and 
moulds them into all the conceptions of a grand civil econ- 
omy. What an epic of national unity is this of our art and 
power ! And how it mantles on the cheek of American life 
and American nationality ! Who of you does not love to 
gaze in the fires of ancient mythology, and recall the olden 
chivalry of the sea ? But this our epic breathes a loftier and 
more heroic romance. It furnishes no commercial Argonauts 
to feel their lazy way over the Euxine for a golden fleece, but 
it beats music to a thousand steam-engines traversing three 
temperatures of its inland Nile ; it keeps the waters of five 
Mediterraneans murmuring with its argosies ; it has founded 
States on both sides of its imperial mountain, and laves them 
with waters from the same springs that flow to either ocean ; 
it has thrown open Japan, and is at work upon the temper of 
the Celestial Empire ; it has strewn tlie shores of the Polar 
seas with the graves of its maritime martyrs ; and, since 
some of you commenced your studies, it has discovered and 
opened the golden gate at Panama, and interpreted the dream 
which oppressed Columbus in his dying hour. 



THE EELATIONS OF THE EDUCATED MAN, ETC. 53 

Take a further glauce at the unity of our historic stages. 
You will begin with the early discoveries, settlements, coloni- 
zations. You see the Puritans rearing the ensign of a religious 
organism in New England ; the real and shabby gentlemen 
starting on a speculation in Virginia ; the French, of all re- 
ligious and of none, encamping in the West ; the Huguenots, 
of a Christian chivalry, planting a hope in the farther South ; 

— and you behold them extending and expanding over a 
hundred years towards a common centre of colonial power. 
Then comes the next and more appreciable era, — the colonial 
period, — full of individualities, and yet of commonalty and 
unity. The story is too familiar for repetition : how for fifty 
years and more these peoples, religions, interests, races, from 
their various sources and quadrangular settlements, gradually, 
but with all the prestige of destiny, were constantly drawing 
nearer and nearer to a centralization of colonies ; how the 
parentage of England guided and protected them, and while 
it thought of their limitation, acted all the while for tlieir 
exaltation, — impressing the colonists into European wars, 
but thus educating them for another war which was to come, 

— giving us the Washington and adjunct heroes that no other 
discipline could have made. And then comes another stage 
in the historic continuity, — the Eevolutionary period, — 
about which, as this hour is short and is no part of the 
Fourth of July, I will not say one word. Once more, and we 
reach the historical crystallization in which under a con- 
stitutional Union the free provinces became one, — as the 
individualities of Greece endeavored not quite effectually to 
be when Philip and Alexander threatened them like a dark 
gathering cloud, — as the provincial individualities of Italy 
at times have tried all in vain to become. The work was 
accomplished ; the States became a unit ; the drama was 
vindicated : — 

"The four first acts already past, 
A fifth shall close the drama with the day." 

And so, ever since, this miracle of the world has gone for- 



54 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

ward. In seventy years the AUeghanies have receded to the 
Father of Waters, the Eocky Mountains have bowed before 
the spirit of the Union as it advanced to the great serene 
Pacific ; a broad, active, violent nationality, free, impetuous, 
resistless, conscious of the power of unity and therefore 
ambitious, has brought us — I need not say how, for it 
is too familiar — to the situation of the homogeneous re- 
public. 

And thus your democratic nationality, whether you con- 
sider it as a birth under the new philosophy of Bacon, or a 
growth under four eras of logical development since, stands 
before you isolated from all the analogies of history, — a 
colossal product out of the cycles of Providence, — an essen- 
tial flower out of the germinations of the conflicts and fatigues 
of the race, — a grand national personality, moving easily, 
naturally, consciously, to its destiny, — a unity in its origin, 
and knitted to closer unity by the absolutism of its own 
situation and the lapse of its time and its strifes. It has 
recognized at all times its members and its parts, but has 
acted at all times as a whole. Its vitality, instinct, hope, 
are all its own; and these, combining with its fleets and 
armies, with the thunders of its ordnance and the vespers 
of its religion, have never ceased to give that challenge 
which virtue and independence offer to every foreign in- 
terloper or intruder, — whether the continental jailer of 
France or the great Insular hypocrite, — to every traitor 
leader, whether moving imder the standard of the Palmetto, 
or the Pelican filthy and odious. Against them all we have 
an inheritance to defend. 

Think next, and briefly, of this nationality in its diversity. 
All leading nations are heterogeneous. The identity of a 
nation is always more or less disturbed by a variety of sub-' 
ject races, alien populations, and discordant tongues. France 
is not without this element, and the British Empire is alive 
with its perturbations. Her drum-beat around the globe 
strikes the ear of every religion, her crown has to be adapted 



THE RELATIONS OF THE EDUCATED MAN, ETC. 55 

to every form of law, and the pavement of her court is tessel- 
lated with memorials of every species of humankind. We 
encounter this element here, but it masters itself under the 
influence of that spirit of personal liberty which welds all 
classes and races. Other and greater causes of diversity are 
a part of our peril. You have thought — and I hardly ought 
to remind you — how great a trouble it has been, that these 
States were all separate in their origin, and liave been so over 
the wliole range of their history, some of them two hundred 
and forty years ; that in all this time provincial idiosyncra- 
sies have become indurated, the pride of local annals and the 
passion of a local attachment have grown to be a first nature, 
— counties, boroughs, towns, being the only thing known to 
many, and the individual State being the idea consecrate of 
even great and cultured men ; that over all this period, save 
only the space of two short foreign wars, these millions of 
people in their daily thought and life, whether they were 
establishing their schools or building their churches, or mus- 
tering their militia or cultivating their arts, or paying their 
taxes or burying their dead, have felt chiefly the visible, 
gentle, guiding hand of the home-provincial government as a 
tutelary divinity, but have seen the overshadowing national 
parentage only afar ; that even in war the State flag holds its 
place, and asserts its speciality, and vaunts its particular 
renown, while the national bugle gives the only peal to the 
strife. All these details, and many more, belong to the fact 
which stands imperishable, strikes its roots farther back and 
lower down than the Constitution, and drops its fruit, some- 
times bitter and sometimes sweet, over the whole plane of 
our historic union, — the fact that the State is older than the 
nation, that it attracts to itself the first thoughts, the ten- 
derest memories, the most palpable allegiance. We think 
we can forget this fact now when all the tribes are in arms 
for a common cause ; but it is not quite forgotten yet, when 
comparisons or jealousies pass now, even now, between the 
West and the East, whilst the sons of both die side by side. 



56 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

in the same trenches. Our fathers could not escape it while 
they were passing through the first terrible baptism. At that 
early day Statism was the bane of nationality ; it reared its 
crest among the conscript fathers of the Continental Congress, 
as John Adams and others have told us too well. And how 
it broke out in the presence of the sorrowful countenance of 
Washington in the Constitutional Convention, one State de- 
claring itself ready to appeal to a foreign sword for its rights, 
and how the adjustment came at last only from the counsels of 
Madison and Franklin, the journals and traditions apprise us 
too sadly ; and how- it has under one form or another continued 
since to vex the whole and humiliate the North, our memo- 
ries are laden to repletion and our hearts to aching. These 
diversities have taken their affinities and have crystallized at 
length around two forms, — State rights and chattel slavery, 
— the latter gradually drawing to itself the former, and now 
confronting the unit of our power for the last time. To rec- 
oncile these diversities with a conceded nationalism, concession 
and compromise l^ave levied their tribute on the ingenuity of 
statesmen, and more than once have dropped the plummet to 
the depths of human degradation. The test will be applied 
again. We have now reached the ultimate struggle between 
unity and diversity in our system of national life. The choice 
is before us. Compromise, which between right and wrong 
means the surrender of the right, if assented to in the super- 
lative degree to our shame, might possibly yet herald the old 
Union back, and set our nationality moving again in the 
sphere of its weakness, and crown slavery with the national 
jewels, and place the architects of treason on their accus- 
tomed tripods in the Senate Chamber, and confer upon the 
free millions a brief term of peace, in which to contemplate 
America arched with the graves of their sons to accomplish 
such a result. Eather than that, please God ! welcome any 
other fortune which war may bring in its sad, long train. 

Some of you pass into the activities of life while the 
heavens over us thus frown. The love of peace is natural ; 



THE KELATIONS OF THE EDUCATED MAN, ETC. 57 

and peace is greatly needed. But you do not doubt that peace 
must have virtue and honor, or confusion and war are better. 
You will not forget a lesson of your classics, that humiliating 
compromises and corrupt coalitions have sometimes marked a 
nation in the later stages of its degeneracy. I feel sure that 
you will be brought to this trial. Two or three times during 
the war, signs have appeared in the sky. I do not know how 
much of exact authenticity may be attached to recent nebulous 
movements and nebulous characters ; but when Mr. Jefferson 
Davis sends his vicegerent to seek diplomacy at Washington, 
and the arch-traitor of New York proposes in Congress an 
armistice and a mission to Richmond, and from the rookery 
of unclean birds on the Canadian cliff beyond the cataract a 
new brood starts forth to shriek and decoy, we may well 
enough suppose that there is some meaning in it all. These 
seeming questions of amateur diplomatists, whether cunning 
or foolish, we may safely trust to the sagacity and intuition 
of the President of the United States ; and all else let us 
meanwhile confide to Grant and Sherman. And yet, these 
tests of seductive and delusive compromise, meaning either a 
dissolution of this Confederacy, or the restoration of the old 
masters to intensified despotism, are likely to try you. I pray 
leave to remind you of one of the parallels of history ; for you 
will quite surely see in such demonstrations, when they occur, 
the presence of men of your own section and men of States in 
rebellion. You will not forget that Octavius was marching 
to encounter Antony and Lepidus at the very moment when 
a meeting for a coalition between them had already been con- 
certed. The show of war went on, while the preparations 
had already been conceived to apportion the provinces and 
the honors ; the illustration is apparent and the analogy needs 
no explanation. They met and accommodated on an island of 
the Ehenus, as the modern conspirators would meet and ac- 
commodate on the Potomac or the Eappahannock. The last 
of the terms of compromise agreed upon by the Triumvirate 
was the proscription and death of certain prominent friends ; 



58 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

it was difficult, but each at length consented to the sacri- 
fice of some of the best of his adherents, as our compromis- 
sorial ambassadors would consent to impale the liberties of 
their country and apply the attainder of proscription to the 
representative men, if not the representative States, that have 
stood by the just cause. It behooves you to mark the fate of 
a scholar who hesitated and vacillated, — who believed in 
Eome and her liberty, but thought too much and too long of 
the honors of office. The head of Cicero was fixed upon the 
rostra between the two hands, — "a sad spectacle to the city, 
which drew tears from every eye." 

And now permit me to recall you to the common duty of 
maintaining the unity of this empire. The difficulties are 
grave and many. They are enhanced by the philosopliy of 
our system, which is freighted with fraternal loves and fra- 
ternal antagonisms ; by a long history and a large experience 
which liave taught us too frequently a discordance of attach- 
ments and of policies, but mainly, and as a whole, the ne- 
cessity of one life, one hope, one glory. Above and around 
all these civil diversities stands the majestic edifice of Ameri- 
can nationality, raised by the valor and wisdom of our fathers, 
and connecting these provincialities and dependencies with 
one supreme whole, more powerful, more free, more happy, 
than the separate fragments could hope to be if living to the 
end of time ; and it is to the subordination of provincial 
independencies that the grandeur of American citizenship all 
over the olobe owes its existence. In the name of that right 
to NATIONAL UNITY we accept the necessity of the hour ; and, 
perceiving the nucleus around which all these elements of 
diversity and mischief have gathered at last, we will direct 
our policies of peace and of war to the end that it shall be 
removed forever from all connection with the government 
which it has contaminated and the nationality which it has 
put on the peril of its life. Nearly two years ago this policy 
was pronounced by the President. Prior to that event the 
national spirit faltered and relucted. But the appearance of 



THE RELATIONS OF THE EDUCATED MAN, ETC. 59 

the first Proclamation of Freedom, while it chained the 
thrones of Europe to their neutrality, electrified and saved 
the heart of America. Her nationality at once beat to the 
instincts of courage and hope, and 

" Suddenly embued with holy grace, 
Like the transition of some watery cloud 
In passing o'er the moon's refulgent disc, 
Glowed with new life." 

The firm President adheres to it, with no retracing steps. To 
the astonished vision of the wretched cabal of the Clifton 
House, his purpose, his promulgation, shines forth in all the 
radiance of the rainbow, which sways only to take the rays of 
the sun and lives among those eternal thunders. 

" Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, 
the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of 
Slavery ! " Be this our ritual and our liturgy. Do you tell 
me we cannot succeed under it ? I tell you we cannot suc- 
ceed under any other. Let us take the decree and with the 
old colors wrap it to our heart. Better this Nationality 
should wander among the spirits of the lost republics, and go 
through the ages to rustic music with the uncomplaining 
shade of John Brown, with not another victory on earth, if 
only it may die here within the pale of the favor of God, — 
rather than it should sell its liberty, its honor, and its con- 
science to a rebel in arms or to an enemy wearing the garb of 
a friend nearer home. 

3. It remains that I speak of the special duty of the edu- 
cated man, as a controlling popular agency, to enlighten and 
preserve the national spirit. Has not Washington said that, 
"in proportion as the Union rests on public opinion, that 
opinion must be enlightened " ? Under the laws which 
govern that opinion, your instrumentality begins early, and 
increases as the sphere of your life enlarges. Wilberforce 
wrote for the public press at the same time that " he excelled 
all the other boys in his scholarship ; " and at twenty-seven 
he said his mind was oppressed with "the great scenes of 



60 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

"bondage," and that " God had set before him the reformation 
of his country." The very boys in Eome were obliged to 
learn the twelve tables by heart, carmen necessarium. The 
sons of the universities, all who think, speak, write, — to 
them a free and intelligent people offer the attentive ear and 
the confiding mind. 

In the complicated action of society we are directed largely 
by our positive knowledge, yet perhaps in a greater degree by 
our confidence in others. Faith, — shall I say ? — more fre- 
quently than philosophy, governs the conduct of states. Our 
venerable religion lives upon so simple a fact as that. The 
analogy extends and pervades all life. Thus it becomes a law 
of our social progress, that the leaders of the general mind 
wield their influence by a twofold rule of efficacy. The first 
is that by which electric thought, sentiment, inspiration, pro- 
ceeding from those who constitute the intellectual advance 
guard, descend through the medium of print and speech to 
the current of mind below, — " brightening and purifying 
through the air of common life." The other rule is that 
which impels men, on their instinct and experience, to accept 
others as their guides, their standards. This is of more ex- 
tended application among a free people than a favorite theory 
of public flattery is willing to proclaim. That is a public 
opinion in health and vigor which, while it thinks for itself, 
also follows the light of its lawgivers, scholars, statesmen. 
Such a public opinion moves with power. Greatly has this 
appeared in those countries of such popular organization that 
educated mind has come into immediate contact with the 
rank and file of the state. On the one hand, this faith in 
others, and on the other, this frequent direct intercourse of 
elevated minds with the common understanding, gave to the 
gallant little republic of Athens her seal of renown. Receiv- 
ing in trust the lessons of her noble lawgiver, and bringing 
her ear to the voices of those who in public speech expounded 
them, she became great as she was free, and ascended rapidly 
the pathway of fame. Tor a century and a half her proud 



THE RELATIONS OF THE EDUCATED MAN, ETC. 61 

and lofty head never drooped. And in the gradual with- 
drawal of her trust in the exalted genius and patriotic spirit 
which remained steadfast longer than she, we must date the 
decline and decay from which at last the wisdom of her 
Phociou and the startling notes of her Demosthenes sought 
in vain to arouse her. 

Ours is a government of Grecian model. This heritage 
has come to us out of the master spirits who commanded the 
confidence of the people in the early days. The Eevolutionary 
period first dawned in their souls. Adams, Lee, Witherspoon, 
others, trained in the conflicts of the university, strengthened 
on all the fields of professional labor, moulded, directed, or- 
ganized, the reason and the passions of the colonists to their 
final determination. In the constitutional period which fol- 
lowed, Madison in Virginia, Hamilton in ISTew York, Ames in 
Massachusetts, known as masters of the collected wisdom of 
ages, were taken in confidence as pilots on a stormy sea. 
Always has it been so here. Americans — no people more 
— respect the closets and alcoves and galleries ; and those 
whom they behold coming out of them, with modesty but 
heroism, with learning but not pedantry, with dead languages 
but living sympathies, with bosoms heaving not with the dry 
cough of damp and mould but with sentiments generous 
enough for nations and humanity, — scholars, orators, thinkers, 
men, soldiers, — all such they clasp with hooks of steel, and 
perish never but in their embrace. These are the men who 
do more than their own thinking, wherever assigned, — often 
quite as effectually in private as on the grander public stage. 
Cicero at Tusculum exercised the finest influence of his life ; 
Everett in his retirement furnishes inspiration for loyal mil- 
lions at home and in the field. 

Never in any country, as in ours, has the educated mind 
been such a " bright, particular star." Never in any country, 
as in ours, has the heart of a people turned to liberalized and 
lettered men. I have alluded to the epoch of the Pievolution 
which was guided by them, to the epoch of the Constitution 



62 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

which rested so chiefly tipoii them. But after that, when 
parties formed, and the Eepublic divided altogether and in- 
tensely under two, Jefferson did the thinking of the one, and 
Hamilton of the other, as no men before by only intellectual 
efficiency controlled a people having a government. Of 
Jefferson — so vital to-day is this country with the authority 
of his learning, his philosophy, and his politics, all now re- 
flected from his nine printed volumes and a thousand tradi- 
tions beside — I need speak no more; but of Hamilton, one 
word. You know how he commenced, coming out of Colum- 
bia College, almost without a beard, and firing New York to 
arms before his name was known. That prescient intuition, 
that great judgment, that clear reason, that cultured soul, 
went onward and upward, counselled Washington for twenty 
years and till he passed away ; and when Hamilton died, a 
young man still, in thirteen States men wrote and spoke and 
wept as if they had lost faith in their understanding. He 
was out of of&ce when he fell, sixty years ago, the finest 
genius of all American generations thus far, second perhaps 
to Edwards as a dialectician, but first of publicists. The 
tidings of his untimely death in its rapid spread cast a pallor 
over half a people who leaned upon his intellect and believed 
in his conclusions. The command of an intellectual lead- 
ership had been terminated. He was scholar and student 
to the last. Tradition has said that, M'hen preparing the 
Treasury papers which placed his fame by the side of Necker 
and Pitt, his early studies were still his guide, — that he held 
in one hand his coffee for a stimulant, and in the other the 
old thumbed Euclid for the trimmer of the celestial light. 

I am speaking of the power of educated mind in a country 
like ours. Pass to a generation later, and think how two oth- 
ers ruled their period, and educated our nationality, tlirough 
a term of thirty years, down to the brink on which we stand 
and shrink at this moment. 

A scholar of the South, student of history, in utmost 
mastery of the mental processes, darting his thought like the 



THE RELATIONS OF THE EDUCATED MAN, ETC. G3 

flash of the lightning into the mind of all that geographical 
section, espousing theories never to abandon them, and im- 
pressing them upon the large school of his admirers with a 
clear, frosty, crispy logic, — Calhoun has brought half the 
geography of this Union to confront us in arms. Lesser lu- 
minaries have reflected his light ; but the source, the power, 
is his. For myself, I never read his published works without 
yielding an unwilling admiration to the charm of the fasci- 
nation. Their influence on the mind and heart of millions 
in the South has been supreme. This war is His war. 

Turn now to another luminary in the constellation of the 
North, — our own Webster. From the same discipline of 
studies, of more learning, of equal logic, of larger compre- 
hensiveness, less demonstrative but more convincing, not 
forgetful of the members of his country but thoughtful ratlier 
of the whole, regarding this Union not as a compact of 
fragments but as a nation of parts transmuted and transfused 
into one nationality, he too has been the teacher of a people. 
Perceiving in him such a consummation of qualities as comes 
only of the triad union of learning and statesmanship and 
jurisprudence, and that only in the intervals of ages, — as 
here and there a solemn cathedral stands apart, rich witli the 
spoils of time, — the people of the North have taken a large 
part of their education in public law and civil study from 
his lips. In his own language applied to another, they have 
received his statement as argument, and his inference as 
demonstration. They have been convinced, and have be- 
lieved and assented, because it has been gratifying, delightful, 
to think and feel and believe in unison with an intellect of 
so evident superiority. He has been our instructor for the 
Union. As to the relations of the citizen with the govern- 
ment he has taught a generation of the Eepublic, though 
received chiefly by a generation of the Nortli. Those in- 
structions have flowed through the general mind upon such 
a current of deep nationality and pellucid order and beauty 
of language, — the highest style of poetry playing all the 



64 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

while among the oaken branches of his immortal Saxon, — 
that they affect the mental habitudes of our time long after 
his eyes have been sealed, and are mirrored forth from all 
our minds, as the ISTorthern skies from the forest lakes. 

There can be but one Hamilton, Calhoun, or Webster. But 
thousands have formed their character within the same halls 
and groves as these our leaders, have brought their mind 
into subjection to the same stern studies and severe techni- 
calities of the schools, have cast their thought and expression 
in the same mould of those languages which hold the rich 
mines of the world, have wrestled the faculties with mathe- 
matical struggles, have opened their imagination to the 
ennobling impulses and stimulations, and have crowned the 
whole with the choral harmonies of the Christian faith. 
These make the scholars and the men. Their prudent coun- 
sels, their winged words, will be immortal. Practised in 
the gymnasium of exact science, plucking riches from the 
illuminated halls of the classic ages, chaining their thought 
to the medium of a precise language in which words are 
things, reaching out over years of mental labor to apprehend 
the mutual relations of all knowledge, mounting to the sublime 
theorems engraved in the heavens, and coming back to toil 
and study and struggle among men, — thus informed, fur- 
nished, liberalized, exercised, invigorated, — these are they 
who are wanted for an intellectual heroism fitted for the 
shocks of this present time. 

Gentlemen, I cannot see far enough to define the boundaries 
of the educated man's influence. But I have thought that we 
could bring to these revisited halls a united testimony to the 
imperious necessity, in the present aspect of our public affairs, 
of the aid which is to be found in the authority and influence 
of literary character. The whole boundless continent is ours, 
and belongs to us and our flag. In its azure and starry glories 
it is — it is a fit object of the scholar's homage, worthy of his 
life and his death. Ours is a nobler heritage than ever cast 
its shadows upon the -^gean or Adriatic. In the hearts of 



THE RELATIONS OF THE EDUCATED MAN, ETC. 65 

its youth let this Union he enshrined forever. Convened 
upon this occasion of our fellowship, let us pledge ourselves 
ta its preservation. It is on the perilous ridge of hattle. 
When others shake their heads or smother their speech, let 
us in preference adopt the grand words of the Grecian orator, 
whom you love so well, in the great oration which survives 
the ruins of Grecian art : " No man ever saw me smile at the 
success of the Lacedtemonians, or sorrow over that of the 
Athenians." This American nationality ! Let the marvels 
of its divine origin, the patriotic interpositions that have pre- 
served it, hecome endeared to us like classic song. Let us 
prove true to it in our own brief time, and invest its future, 
to us all unknown, with the ideal forms of life and hope and 
beauty. Let us this evening — our last wish, our last prayer 
— invoke around it the triune divinities that have watched 
over it thus far, — Eeligion, Liberty, and Law, — and, under 
the providence of God, may it be preserved in its integrity 
and its grandeur for us and for the generations that shall 
come after. 



SPEECH 

before the republican state convention at worcester, sept. 15, 1864. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention : 

Your kindness embarrasses me. I could not do justice to 
my own sensibilities, and at the same time give expression to 
them in a public manner with decorum and propriety, and in 
a way adequate to your kindness. First of all, gentlemen, 
permit me to congratulate you, as many a time within the 
last two weeks I have felicitated myself, that here in Massa- 
chusetts we are in harmony among ourselves. Speaking 
merely in a local or personal sense, this would be, at the 
best, of only transient account, and therefore of secondary 
importance. But since we are a part of the grand national 
confederacy of this Union, whose independent existence hangs 
suspended at this moment not only from the point of the 
bayonet but upon the wisdom of counsel as well, I hail it 
as among the best portents of this hour, that here, at the 
present moment as in times past, our Union is perfect as our 
cause is just. 

What though there be some slight discrepancies between 
the counsels of Eichmond and the Clifton House and Chicago, 
and a little straggling along their whole line, — what though 
there be some slight divergences of opinion among them as 
to whether the loyal armies should ignominiously surrender 
before an armistice or afterward, — what though they slightly 
differ among themselves as to whether their candidate should 



SPEECH BEFORE THE REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION. 67 

stand upon an open, undisguised peace platform, or on a 
piece of framework and joinery over which the palmetto 
shall float at the top and the Union jack at half-mast below. 
Let them adjust all these questions among themselves. Be 
it our duty, as I understand that it has been your pleasure 
and mine this morning, to close up our ranks here, to resist 
the foe at every stage and in every degree, to snuff the scent 
of treason everywhere and at all times, whether it shall be 
palpable and visible like a cloud, or spread like an impal- 
pable poison in the shadowy forms of speech all the way from 
the wigwam (which they have counterfeited) round to New 
York. I rejoice, Mr. President and fellow-citizens, that if we 
ever had any differences, of which I have had no knowledge, 
we have assembled here to-day not to revive but to bury 
them in the depth of paramount patriotism and a common 
interest. In the overwhelming exigency tlvat is upon us, 
union among ourselves is the highest of all duties, in the 
most solemn of all causes ; and to this sublime account of 
nationality, to this august reckoning of the friendships of 
loyal men, I desire in the most cordial manner to unite with 
you in welcoming to our standard, to our association, to our 
attestation, the influence, the name, and the patriotism of 
Edward Everett. 

Gentlemen of the Convention, honored some three months 
ago by the Union Republicans of Massachusetts as one of 
their delegates to the convention at Baltimore, and by my 
colleagues there as their chairman, for myself, and in their 
behalf, I can stand here now and look you in the face, and 
proudly challenge your approval of our doings. 

I call upon my colleagues, many of whom are present, to 
bear me witness that no convention ever assembled on this 
continent, of the same popular characteristics or organization, 
more free from official or personal influences, or more clearly 
reflecting the heart and the judgment of the American people. 
No assembly ever convened upon this continent under a more 
impressive sense of public accountability and responsibility, 



68 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

and none certainly ever manifested greater indications of 
harmony and of enthusiasm. Sir, history records no such 
harmony except in connection with the dark hours of im- 
pending national fate. It was grateful to our hearts as 
Massachusetts men to mingle our chorus and yours with the 
voices that came up to us from twenty six or seven States of 
this Union, in that city whose streets had been stained by 
the blood of our own citizens, — in that city, sir, whose gates 
having been closed had also been opened, never again to be 
closed, by Massachusetts arms. 

It was especially grateful to our hearts as your delegates 
that we sat by the side of the delegation from the State of 
Maryland, whose votes in every instance were recorded in 
unison with ours. You will not think it strange, my friends, 
that I thought of the 19th of April, 1861, and that it seemed 
to me and my colleagues upon that occasion, in the lan- 
guage of the poet of nature, that the " whirligig of time had 
brought round its revenge." It was one of those revenges 
which sometimes follow in the train of war, and which bless 
the coming and the departing generations of mankind with 
the glory and the immortality of freedom ; because, my 
friends, while your delegates were deliberating there in quest 
of the best methods and the best men that should conduct 
this Union to a triumph over all its present troubles, Mary- 
land, nay, the city of Baltimore herself, was at that moment 
deliberating at Annapolis over that universal emancipation 
which, awaiting only the verdict of her peoj)le a few weeks 
hence, has been consummated by the people of that Common- 
wealth. I said to a citizen of Baltimore, a native of Massa- 
chusetts, but a long time a resident of that adopted State, 
" Sir, the blood of Massachusetts has wet your pavements not 
in vain." And his reply to me was, "Tell the people of 
Massachusetts " — and I now give the message to you, men 
of Lowell and men of Lawrence — " tell the people of IMassa- 
chusetts that those monuments to the early martyrs of the 
war for the restoration of the Constitution and the Union, 



SPEECH BEFORE THE REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION. 69 

to be erected by the joint enterprise and liberality of the 
Commonwealth and of the people of her cities, will, in all the 
future ages of this Eepublic, bear the same radiant inscription 
with the monuments of the capital city of Maryland." 

And now, Mr. President and fellow-citizens, compare our 
work with that of our adversaries. Compare the platform of 
Baltimore with the platform of Chicago. I am not going to 
detain you with a recapitulation of the characteristics of 
either. For myself, I desire to go on appeal to the American 
people, with no other issue than that which is presented by 
these comparative and diverse systems of political ethics. 
The one breathes undying hostility to the public enemies, — 
the other inspires hostility only against its own Govern- 
ment ; the one swears to sustain the Government in quelling 
the rebellion by force, — the other conceals the fact that 
there is any rebellion existing at all ; the one sustains the 
Government in its fixed and irreversible determination to 
accept no compromise and to offer no terms of peace not 
based upon the conquest or the unconditional surrender of 
the armies of treason, — the other abjectly invites any com- 
promise whatsoever, however revolting to the manhood of 
the nation, and opens the ghastly doubt whether separation 
itself should not be accepted as the price of armistice and 
of peace. The Baltimore Convention resolves that the na- 
tional safety demands the utter and complete extirpation of 
slavery from the soil of the Eepublic ; the Chicago Con- 
vention by its acquiescence, by its collateral issues, by its 
tone and temper, by all that it says, by all that it does not 
say, places Southern slavery as the brightest gem in our 
coronet of empire, and would restore that dynasty which 
before the war was a rule of unvarying humiliation, and 
which, if now replaced, would be a reign of intolerable des- 
potism and disgrace. Your delegates at Baltimore offered 
their thanks and yours to the soldier of the flag, and took 
the oath to stand by him unto the end, to the last of their 
treasure and of their hearts ; the delegates of Chicago offer 



70 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

tlieir sympathy to the soldier in the one hand, and in the 
other hold forth to him a welcome to an infamy that would 
be traditional and perpetual hereafter. 

No wonder, fellow-citizens, that the people of the United 
States are rising to an appreciation of the differences between 
these diverse systems of political ethics. Witness the result 
in Vermont, witness the result in Maine ; stand ready to 
witness all those that will follow. No wonder that the 
brave men in arms repudiate with scorn a system and a 
creed which would place a stigriia upon tlie name of every 
Union warrior living, and would consign the name of the 
dying to the execration and the contempt of his children to 
the remotest posterity ! Sir, in the language of the lamented 
Douglas, — the last public words ever addressed by him to 
mortal ears, spoken to his fellow-citizens in the wigwam in 
Chicago, in which Abraham Lincoln was originally nomi- 
nated to the Presidency, and which, as I have before re- 
marked, these gentlemen have ridiculously counterfeited, — 
in the language of the lamented Douglas, " There are but two 
parties in this controversy ; every man must be for the United 
States or against it; there can be but two sides, — patriots 
or traitors." 

And though we have not the pleasure and the honor to 
listen to the power of his living lips, let us rise to the lofty 
appreciation and apprehension of the language of the great 
commoner of the West, — his dying testimony. None in this 
country but patriots or traitors ! Eepublicans of Massachu- 
setts, your name is a good one ; but the course of our adver- 
saries is rapidly making it obsolete, for it is not so much 
henceforth a Republican, or a Democratic, as it is a Union 
party, and a party for disunion of this confederacy. It is 
henceforth a party for the Government of this country or a 
party against that Government. . . . And so, Mr. President, 
as there are many things to be done, and but a little time 
before us, only one word more. 

We endeavored to consummate your wishes by selecting an 



SPEECH BEFOEE THE REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION. 71 

instrumentality at Baltimore which would carry out the pur- 
pose of the people of tliis Eepublic. And here I desire to 
say that, in my apprehension, if the convention had been 
postponed to July or to August or to September or to Octo- 
ber, it would have been all the same, there would not have 
been the difference of a vote whatsoever, for Abraham Lincoln 
was in the hearts of this people. I do not stand here in 
behalf of your delegation to discuss the question whether 
there may be or may not have been undoubted errors in his 
administration. I only know that, if there had not been, he 
were not subject to the condition of mortal lot. 

This much, however, I do know, that President Lincoln 
ascended to the responsibilities of his momentous trust at a 
juncture of public affairs which has no parallel in the annals 
of popular government. It is familiar to you all. The events 
of that administration, sufficient in their number, in their 
magnitude, in their consequences, to constitute a century of 
record for other countries and for other ages, beginning ,h 
his mildness, and his familiarity, and his kindness toward 
those who assumed the sword of the Rebellion against the 
Government, culminatinof at last in war, the bloodiest of the 
foulest of recorded time, are too many, too vast, to leave it 
capable for the mind of any man to make a calm survey and 
to form an unqualified judgment upon the history of that 
administration. That, my friends, will be the testimony of 
History in years to come, when her muse shall become the 
calm mistress of the record. 

But we may now here, as at Baltimore we did, poise and 
rest our mind even amid the turmoil and the conflict of civil 
administration, even among the reverberations that come to 
us from all quarters of the field, and form a generally satis- 
factory judgment in regard to the character and the quality 
and the policy of the President of the United States ; and 
that judgment is (as I believe you will indorse the judgment 
of the convention to which I refer) that, as a whole and as a 
summary of the whole, Abraham Lincoln, according to the 



72 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

estimation of every candid, fair, intelligent, and loyal man in 
the United States, has pursued for his object and purpose 
only the salvation of this Government. 

I do not pause here, fellow-citizens, to discuss with you 
those questions of diversity and difference between us which 
may have existed in times past, within the last twenty-four 
months, as to whether he was too rapid or too slow. It is 
enough for me to know that Abraham Lincoln has always 
lived up to the exigencies of the times and the necessity of 
the country as it appeared to an impartial mind. Sir, I offer 
to you no written speech, but I like sometimes to have an 
authority by my side; and in the language of one of the 
greatest and most philosophic masters of thought in the 
whole range of English mind, Edmund Burke, " A man full 
of warm, speculative benevolence may wish society otherwise 
constituted than he finds it, but a good patriot and a good 
politician always considers how he shall make the most of 
the existing material of his country. A disposition to pre- 
serve, an ability to improve, taken together, would be my 
standard of a statesman." "A statesman," says Mr. Burke, 
" never losing sight of principle, is to be governed by circum- 
stances, and judging contrary to the exigencies of the moment 
he may ruin Ins country forever." Therefore, adopting that 
as my basis of predication, I say, sir, tliat I pause not here to 
raise or decide the question already raised between those who 
thought, eighteen months ago, that Abraham Lincoln had been 
too slow or too rapid in the policy which he had enunciated. 
I pause not here to settle the question between those who, 
during the first eighteen months of his administration, would 
have held him back to a more laggard policy, or those who 
would have thrust him forward to a more rapid policy, toward 
the espousal of that theory which, in the judgment of all, only 
qualifying it as to the question of time, was the final fate and 
destiny of this empire. But I do say, sir, in regard to the 
Pi'esident of the United States, that it is sufficient to me that 
whenever he has taken a step or a stride forward, the Lord 



SPEECH BEFORE THE REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION. 73 

has seemed to irradiate and illuminate the path before him. 
It is sufficient for me, and for you, that he has struck the 
epoch bell of the ages at just and exactly such times as 
the people of this country and of other countries were most 
ready to receive the sound, and to echo it in their hearts. 
It is sufficient for me, and for you, fellow-citizens, that 
whether, according to your estimation or mine, the procla- 
mation of freedom came early or came late, when it came 
at all it found the people of the North as it could not 
have found them before, — ready to stand by it and to die 
for it. 

It is sufficient for me, and for you, that the policy enun- 
ciated in two proclamations, while it has sealed the issues here 
at home, has a power abroad at this moment, in the presence 
of which there is no crowned head in Europe that dares 
appeal to its subjects or to the tribunal of the moral senti- 
ment of mankind against the cause of the Union in this 
country. And so in his prosecution of this war. I see him 
ascending to his office without the education or the instincts 
of a soldier ; I behold him trying every expedient, after every 
preceding expedient had failed, as every wise man would do. 
I behold him adopting one policy when another policy had 
proved abortive. I behold him taking one commander after 
another, until at last, under the favor of Almighty God, he 
has found two who are the right ones. 

I behold him determined from the outset that your flag 
and mine should float over every inch of the territory of this 
Republic. And I behold him at length determined, in good 
and ample time, that that flag should float through all the 
zones of this empire over no creature of God in manacles. 
And therefore I say, in accordance with the spirit and with 
the declaration of that Baltimore Convention, that in Abra- 
ham Lincoln I behold the ablest, the wisest, the most accept- 
able, and the most efficient man among all the millions of liis 
countrymen that could have been selected for this imperial 
crisis of the Eepublic. Ah, Mr. President, you know too 



74 ADDKESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

well, — for your familiarity has been with the legislative 
department of the Government of the United States, while 
ours has been here at home, in humbler but not less trust- 
worthy capacity, with the heart and judgment of the people 
in their primary relations, — you know too well, sir, as we do, 
that when our hearts have failed and we have approached 
the verge of despair, when our arms have seemed reticent 
of their thunders and seemed to be unequal to their mission 
of victory, all that was left to us was the buoy^mt and hopeful 
spirit of the President of the United States. 

And, sir, for these reasons, and many others which time 
will not permit me to detail, I believe, as I have before re- 
marked, that this same Abraham Lincoln has a deep place in 
the hearts of the people of this country; and I believe that, 
whether you had called your convention one month or two 
months later, there was but one thunder voice which would 
have demanded that nomination, and which will respond by 
his election. Sir, I remembered while you were deliber- 
ating this morning so wisely and so well in arranging the 
affairs of this Commonwealth, — I remembered that a great 
and departed statesman of Massachusetts had given to us a 
key to the appreciation by the people of this country of 
the qualities and the characteristics and the statesmanship 
of Abraham Lincoln. I transcribed it while you were here. 
Pardon me while I read it. 

" I beheve," said Mr. Webster, in speaking of President Tay- 
lor, " that, associated with the highest admiration of those military 
qualities possessed by him, there was spread throughout the com- 
munity a high degree of confidence and faith in his integrity and 
honor and uprightness as a man. I believe he was especially 
regarded as both a firm and mild man in the exercise of authority ; 
and I have observed, more than once, in this and in other popular 
governments, that the prevalent motive with the masses of man- 
kind for conferring high power on individuals is often a confidence 
in their mildness, their paternal, protecting, and safe character. 
The people naturally feel safe when they feel themselves to be 



SPEECH BEFORE THE REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION. 75 

under the control and protection of sober counsels, of impartial 
minds, of a general paternal superintendence." 

This is the language of Mr. Webster in regard to a departed 
President. I adopt it as better than any which I can command 
or frame npon this occasion, as expressive of the estimation 
in which I believe this convention holds the characteristics 
and qualities of the President of the United States. 

And now, sir, to detain the convention no longer, for I have 
already spoken longer than I intended, I desire to remind you 
that but a few weeks will elapse before the Ides of November 
will be upon us. They may disappoint you, but if they 
should, it will be by the universality and the magnitude of 
the majorities for the loyal arms of this country. 

Under the administration of Abraham Lincoln the storm 
of war will cease, and its desolation will be succeeded by the 
graceful bloom of peace ; and under his administration and 
under the councils which he will call and gather around him, 
be assured, my friends, it will be a peace of honor, of virtue, 
of independence, and of freedom. It will be a peace which 
shall leave to all the generations that shall come after us a 
great and an irresistible Republic, because it will be a Re- 
public that is regenerated and free. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

A EULOGY BEFORE THE CITY COUNCIL AND CITIZENS OF WORCESTER, 
JUNE I, 1865. 

It would be a painful suppression of one of the finest of 
human instincts, and an unbecoming disregard of the official 
proclamation of the Chief Magistrate, if this city were not 
among the foremost to accord its voice to the funeral cry of 
the nation. Never before, in higli joy or deep grief, has the 
normal simplicity of America given way to such pageant 
grandeur. The great fountains of public sorrow have been 
broken up, and a whole people have turned out to herald 
their President returning in silence to the dust of the prairie. 
I look back over forty centuries for the like of this. My eye 
discerns no fit resemblance in anything which the conceits 
of heathen mythology have transmitted, — not in that myth- 
ical sympathy of the Tiber for Marcellus, fortunate recipient 
of such honor, — nor in the many memorial Italian marbles 
and temples, — nor in all the tasteful pomp which has con- 
ducted French kings to their imperial sleep, and has made 
their capital a vast lettered monument to its one great 
departed, — nor in the drum-beat, and cathedral service, and 
royal guard, which have escorted English monarchs from the 
palace to the Abbey. The earliest and latest age alone 
meet now in comparison of mournful pageantry. The Orient 
and the West, the third of Hebrew patriarchs and the six- 
teenth President, four thousand years apart, are pictured 
before us to-day in the same spectacle and lesson of a nation 
following a just and true ruler to his tomb. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 77 

I do not suppose that in all the intervening period, fretted 
and gilded as it has been with art and culture, anything like 
the passage of the herald corpse of Jacob from his death-bed 
to the field and cave of his fathers, in public turn-out, and 
general lamentation, and sincerity of grief, has occurred be- 
fore until now. To the two thousand dependants of that 
deceased, to all those sent forth by his premier son, the most 
munificent of the line of Egyptian kings ordered all the 
public men of his country to report for additional escort on 
the long and patient and solemn march. Chariots and horse- 
men, men and maidens, the grim visages of age and the 
dusky beauty of youth, in lengthened procession, with palms 
and music and benediction, in behalf of that early world 
paid the last tribute to a great and just benefactor, to a 
builder of empire. Measuring the days by their solemn 
tramp and their halts for local condolence, the swarthy 
column moved on over two hundred miles, and laid their 
treasured hero in the august depository of the first and 
second of his line. 

That Oriental retinue of bereavement and sublimity has 
been matched and eclipsed within this last lunar month. 
Dying without the consciousness but amid all the pathos of 
his Eastern exemplar and progenitor, the foremost man of 
this Western world has been carried to his rural rest beyond 
the mountains and near the great river. Awhile he lay in 
state at the capital where he fell, that all classes might gather 
about, to learn the lessons of historical providence and wit- 
ness the presence of God. His dust, garnered beneath 
richest canopies, preceded by raven waving plumes, and 
flanked by reverse arms of the flower youth of the land, has 
been borne on triumphal route through the chief cities of a 
continent. The Monumental City opened her gates in love, 
which four years before would have closed them against him, 
if she had known his coming. Independence Hall struck its 
bell, and the dismal undulations spread through half a mil- 
lion of hearts as he passed by. The great emporium of the 



78 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

North, which had made a jest of much of his life in office, 
bowed as a unit, like a stricken child, and paid such honors 
to his passing shade as nowhere have been witnessed on the 
earth. Still onward and westward, a thousand miles yet to 
go, surrounded by vast throngs, all and everywhere reveren- 
tial, all and everywhere casting choicest flowers upon the 
pathway of the dead, — as if twenty millions had assembled 
to make ovation before the corporeal symbol of a benefactor, 
— your President was taken to his last abode, where he shall 
rest till the dead shall rise at the call of the archangel. 

The first shock of our calamity, the deep sensation of hor- 
ror which pervaded all our hearts when the " couriers of the 
air " told us at midnight how suddenly and in what manner 
President Lincoln had a few hours before been snatched 
away, has now subsided, and we naturally pause and deliber- 
ate upon those qualities of cliaracter and service which, in 
the apparent judgment of this country, have already assigned 
him a place only second in the long lineage of its magis- 
trates. However simple this analysis may seem, it falls 
entirely outside the common range of our study of public 
men and events, and does not belong to the usual analogies 
of biography or history. It would be scarcely more irrational 
to compare the developments and stages througli which we 
have just passed with any or all the unlike periods be- 
fore, than to measure him who has been the central figure 
in these civic and martial achievements by the personalities 
of the past. He will be known and judged by the next age, 
not indeed without regard to his abstract quality, but more 
conspicuously and vividly as the one man who, in the un- 
folding of the panorama of these four years, everywhere 
appears in front and in chief. Under the limitations of a 
single Presidential term he must pass to his place among 
critics and annalists ; but that Presidential term was enough 
to have encircled an historic generation in other ages, and to 
have circumscribed the life-long renown of other statesmen. 
Safely then may we trust him to that judgment which shall 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 79 

fall upon his own brief career of rule. Never any man, 
without public thought or remembrance of his youth or 
early life or disciplinary training, has mounted so quickly to 
the empyrean of fame. Think, for example, in what manner 
we usually estimate Napoleon or Washington. Their dis- 
tinction dates from the beginning. The genius of Napoleon 
is nearly the same to us whether we remember him as a 
child playing with a cannon, or as a youth in the Academy, 
or at twenty-eight dazzling the nations with his unprece- 
dented victories. Washington the youth is familiar to our 
schoolboys, appears great in the French war, only greater in 
the Eevolutiouary and Constitutional period which followed. 
But here is a plain man, since April opened, gone into the 
alcoves of all generations to come and of every race, as to aU 
of his life save the last five years unknown to half his 
countrymen and to the whole world beside. Such and so 
exceptional is our country and our time, such and so excep- 
tional is Abraham Lincoln. 

And yet he had a childhood and a youth. In that which I 
call the first stage of his life, ending when he settled down as 
a lawyer in Springfield, I think we may see that fitting, that 
j)reparation, that nascent destination, which was the providen- 
tial prelude to the ultimate work. Cast into a sparsely in- 
habited wild at eight years, fulfilling the measure of maternal 
ambition when at ten he could read the sacred volume, 
exercising his first conscious power in writing to his moth- 
er's travelling preacher to come and preach over her grave, 
writing letters for the neighbors, attending the first school in 
that country clad in buckskin, only too happy at length when 
he could count as his property a copy of Bunyan and ^Esop, 
a life of Washington and Clay, behold him whose death forty- 
five years later brought autograph letters from every crowned 
head of Europe. His library might have been larger, but 
could it have been better? To his apprehension of the 
Divine Word, learned when that was the only volume in the 
cabin, we may owe the Cromwell-like second Inaugural, 



80 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

which was only half appreciated by his countrymen until the 
praise of it came from the other side of the water. Did a 
man ever reflect better the light of youthful studies, than the 
President reflected ^sop and Bunyan ? No books are more 
likely to be remembered than they ; Cowper said that his 
child-readings of the " Pilgrim's Progress " would abide with 
him till memory should perish. And I confess it is to me a 
grateful fancy, in looking back for the formative influences 
in the life of Lincoln, to perceive in these two masterpieces 
of inventive and natural conception such sources of thought 
and impression as would be best calculated to produce that 
combination, which he so remarkably illustrated, and which 
was not unrequisite for our time, the Puritan and tlie Hoosier. 
Then we are to remember that in this school of Western life, 
with books so few but so good, he acquired what Mr. Burke 
would call " the rustic, manly, home-bred sense of this coun- 
try," — to have polished whose ingenuous roughness would 
have cost us half the power he has had during this war over 
the mass of his citizens. They have liked him all the better, 
that his wisdom and speech were elementary and enabled 
him to speak directly to their hearts. They have liked him 
so much the more, that he did not pretend to be learned, 
while they knew him to be original and wise. Paucity of 
opportunities in youth favored modesty in high position. 
How many members of Parliament, asked an English jour- 
nal, would imitate the modest honesty of the President and 
acknowledge that they had never read all parts of Shake- 
speare ? But he understood and remembered all that he had 
read. 

And now, before he opens his office of law, we catch a 
glimpse of the young man of nineteen floating as supercargo 
on a flatboat to New Orleans. It was his last act of rusticity 
and adveni^ure. He was now unconsciously completing that 
democratic type of character which in its subsequent expan- 
sion and use has contributed so largely to save the union of 
these States. It was indeed a typical enterprise, for that 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 81 

voyage represented the unity of interest and welfare which 
connects the Northwest with the Gulf, and all the States 
together from the Crescent round to Malabar. Upon his re- 
turn he would enter the gates of productive life, how eventful 
he then knew not, nor any one of you. Suppose that in 
one of those transition hours, as he was borne lazily on the 
great currents and by the solemn forests, his unlettered mind 
rapt in the rhapsodies of the Prophets, or the dreams of Bun- 
yan, or the wit of ^sop, or the grandeur of Washington, the 
angel of this dedicated youth had raised the curtain and re- 
vealed to him, that before he should pass the ordinary prime of 
life he should be elevated to the highest trust of this empire, 
lifted on the shoulders of the people in ecstasy at the thought 
his own words had kindled of making it all free, — that un- 
der his presiding the issues of life and death to this Union 
should be unrolled on every field of a continental war, — that 
he himself should sit in control over larger armies than 
Europe, north or south, had ever seen, — that his hand should 
touch the electric wire which should awake four millions of 
the children of men to liberty and immortality, — that the 
Government of his country should at last be sealed in his 
own blood to eternal security and glory, and that he, almost 
yet young, should return to sleep with his fathers, leaving to 
both hemispheres a name that shall be hailed with that of 
Washington, whose history he was even then reading, till 
time shall be no more ! He would have fallen prostrate 
before the vision ! And yet, under the beneficence of our 
institutions, if this was to happen at all it was as likely to 
happen to him as to any other, and he lived to behold it, and 
died in an imtimely hour at fifty-seven ! 

Upon the second period, that which I call the brawn in his 
life, these exercises will not permit me long to dwell. It 
bears the journals of twenty years, from the raising of the 
attorney's sign in '37 till he gave himself without reclamation 
to his country at the opening of '58. They tell us he was an 
able lawyer, and I can believe that ; but he must have been 



82 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

elementary, not learned. They give us good accounts of liis 
professional successes, but other and greater scenes make us 
forget them. The jurisprudence of the West in his day has 
entitled few men to enduring distinction. We know, how- 
ever, that he distinguished himself in his own cases, and that 
he was a favorite sought to manage the causes of the clients 
of others. In the legislature of his State he measured lances 
with the rising Douglas, and there for the first time caught 
the gleam of his own future. Once he went into Congress, 
and left it without great distinction, — but that should not be 
counted largely against him. Yet it was then that he became 
considerably known in the country. At that time I met him 
in the streets of Worcester. Congress had just adjourned 
when our Whig State Convention assembled here in 1848. 
As the chosen head of the city committee of the party with 
which he acted, I had called a public meeting in yonder hall 
for the evening preceding the convention, and had invited 
several gentlemen of note to make addresses. None of them 
came. But as the sun was descending I was told that Abra- 
ham Lincoln, member of Congress from Illinois, was stopping 
at one of the hotels in town. I had heard of him before, and 
at once called upon him and made known my wish that he 
would address the meeting in the evening, to which he readily 
assented. I further suggested to him that as the party in 
whose cause we were then united was largely in the minority 
here, and as there was an unusual bitterness in the antago- 
nistic politics of this community, he should practise much 
discretion, and leave our side as well in its prospects as he 
could. His benignant eye caught my meaning and his gentle 
spirit responded approval. His address was one of the best 
it has ever been ray fortune to hear, and left not one root of 
bitterness behind. Some of you will remember all this, but not 
so distinctly as I do. I never saw him afterwards. The next 
day the convention came ; the genius-eloquence of Choate, of 
blessed memory, M^as applauded to the echo, and the stately 
rhetoric of Winthrop received its reward; but the member 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 83 

from Illinois, though he remained in town surrounded by 
associate Congressmen, was that day and in that body un- 
known and unheard. But where are they all now, and where 
is he ? — in the benedictions of his countrymen, in the grati- 
tude of an enfranchised race, in the love of mankind ! 

In 1858, only seven years ago, Mr. Lincoln was selected by 
the Republicans of Illinois as the competitor of Mr. Douglas 
for a seat in the Senate of the United States. Thus opened 
the third and last period of his life. How strong he was at 
that time in the Empire State of the West is well shown by 
his having received every vote in a ballot of twelve hundred 
chosen delegates in a State convention. That was the hour 
of his consecration, of his sacramental vow, in the service of 
the country. Then and there he became the representative 
man. And now, after reading for the second time his discus- 
sions with his eminent rival in that canvass, I can declare 
my conviction that to the clear analysis which he constantly 
presented of the purposes and the teachings of the founders 
of this Government, to the reverence with which he imj^ressed 
the people for the humane and benevolent intent of the 
Constitution, to the exalted moral reasons upon which he 
predicated the new coming era, we are more largely indebted, 
than to any other person, for the firm purpose and high re- 
solve which, two years later, united and inflamed the free 
States against the further encroachments of slavery in this 
country. You will consider the honorable courage of the 
man in the positions he then took. The laws, the traditions, 
the systems, of Illinois, her Southern geography and settle- 
ment, tlie memories and prejudices of her people, Avere all 
against the theories and humanities which he determined in 
the fear only of God to proclaim. But his soul was ablaze 
with the enthusiasm of a Christian statesmanship, and he 
went forth in the panoply of immortal truth, which neither 
the timidity of friends could strip from him nor the darts of 
opponents could penetrate. He sounded at the opening the 
bugle note of omen which rang through the land: "A house 



84 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Govern- 
ment cannot permanently endure half slave and half free. I 
do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect 
the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. 
It will become all one thing or all the other." Many else- 
where, some there, hesitated over the high doctrine ; large 
numbers of Republicans in the North were not unwilling to 
see Mr. Douglas successful as a reward for his brave contest 
with Buchanan. I confess that I felt so myself. But the 
newly invested champion looked over the fleeting hour and 
the mere question of a senatorial chair; he saw farther than 
times or localities, and pierced beyond the veil which too 
often shuts off administrations from the vision of the beati- 
tudes and the ages ; he knew the importance that the banner 
of a new party, which bore the name of Freedom, should 
carry radiant inscriptions, and over all the State, from her 
frozen springs to her Egyptian heats, he upheld 

" Th' imperial ensign, which, full high advanced, 
Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind." 

By this unwavering fidelity to his convictions, his hour having 
not yet come, under the overruling of Providence he accom- 
plished both more and less than he set out for, — he made his 
rival Senator, himself President, and his country Free. As 
I look backward over the events of that year which he so 
largely controlled, — as I follow him sixty times to the hustings 
and hear him in language not one word of w^hich, so far as I 
can judge, he would wish to blot, urging those lessons which 
the nation must then have received or have passed beneath the 
yoke of perpetual humiliation, — as I see him rising, from 
the autumn of '58 to the spring of '60, to an ascendency over 
all others as the advocate of the primal principles of a free 
republic, and so recognized across the whole northern belt, 
from the great plains to the Atlantic frontier, — I not only 
count him most fortunate of men in the height to which all 
these things soon after conducted him and us, but I con- 
clude that if he had gone then to the sleep in which he now 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 85 

reposes, he would have been embalmed statesman-father of a 
new dispensation. The year 1858 had established him. 

*' The boundless prairies learned his name, 
His words the mountain echoes knew ; 
The Northern breezes swept his fame 
From icy lake to warm bayou." 

Our greatest Olympiad opened in 1860. I need not sketch 
the preceding or attendant circumstances of the convention 
and the nomination. Our first choice was another, and 
Massachusetts followed the fine arts of New York to give it 
success. They have a better and larger way at the West. 
While the men of the East w^ere ciphering at the hotels in 
Chicago, the men of the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Wa- 
bash w^ere packing the wigwam and filling the square with a 
myriad of large hearts and brazen throats ready to sound 
another and a loftier chant. Their candidate took the votes, 
and the voice of all rose to the sky like a chorus of nature. 
It was the echo of the voice of God. 

Fortunate, providential selection! Any other apparently 
would have shipwrecked the Ark of the Covenant. If you 
consider how inevitable are the jealousies of the West towards 
the East, — to which we nmst always submit, and which we 
must always palliate, since we cannot prevent or remove 
them, — if, especially, you reflect what a bond of fate that 
Father of Waters is to us all, and how we must keep peace 
and conciliation with those river gods if we expect unity, pros- 
perity, and glory, — if you freshly remember how, since this 
war began, the people of the West, though their sons were 
dying in the same trenches and in the same hospitals witli 
ours, have thought and said that we were reaping the greater 
benefits of the sacrifice, — you will agree with me that none 
but a Western President could have kept our armies, our 
voters, and our hearts, united amid the afflictions and reverses 
that have rolled their thunders and their floods over us. And 
so the hand of our fathers' God interposed against our calcu- 
lations five years ago at the City of the Lakes. 



86 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

Our departed hero accepted the nomination in written 
words which are a model for practical religion and modern 
statesmanship. In language which shows that the Spirit of 
the Most High was upon him, he wrapped the resolutions 
around his heart, and in terms which should have won every 
citizen from Key West to Eichmond, he gave himself to the 
issue now so triumphant and so sad. It was an issue worthy 
of the best days of any nation. As he received it from the 
convention that framed it, and as he stated it in his letter of 
acceptance, it was a system of policy and statesmanship which 
Daniel Webster, ev^en on that memorable 7th of March, would 
have rejoiced to acknowledge, — which Henry Clay, in any of 
his later and brilliant years, would have gladly made resound 
as out of a trumpet from the borders of Virginia through the 
length of Kentucky to the Eiver. It was a broad and gener- 
ous platform, such as Jefferson would have decorated with 
an hundred theses of his philosophy, such as Washington 
would have stood upon and invoked the blessings of the Al- 
mighty. And I have the honor to say here — to be sure it 
is now after the fulfilment of the declarations and the proph- 
ecies — that if Abraham Lincoln had not felt warranted to 
justify and stand upon the resolutions, then the North 
American Eepublic M'as not deserving of salvation. But he 
thought, as we thought, that there was a divinity in the im- 
pending struggle, and we entered upon it together, all of us 
rejoicing to have such a leader, and he only too willing to 
stake his life on the support of such friends and on such a 
sublime restoration and reconstruction of nationality. 

He was chosen ; the men in the South of our country had 
decided that he should be chosen, and that the precipitation 
of their designs should attend with equal promptness the 
humanity and patriotism of the North. The work of seces- 
sion began at the instant, and before the President elect 
had reached the capital, so many of the' slave States had 
already declared themselves out of the Union as to make it 
certain that nearly all the others intended to follow. Thougli 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 87 

Buchanan had remained in office four months since the elec- 
tion, let the curtain drop over all that he did and over all 
that he neglected to do, and let us behold the new President 
approaching the frowning scene which confronted him. 

Such work was his as no man had ever put hand to. A 
nation was dissolving, and half its territory was bristling 
with the arms of revolt. In the loyal sections there was 
universal despondency, and among those upon whom he 
must rely tliere was every variety of counsel, from that which 
would permit the wayward sisters to depart in peace, to that 
"which would thrust the arm of the Government in the moment 
of its greatest weakness against the thick bosses of a rebellion 
of thirty years' preparation. The czar, the emperor, the king, 
would marshal and march out his army and crush insurgency 
before the next moon ; but the constitutional republic had no 
army. Foreign nations caught at the defect in a moment as 
fatal to our existence, and adapted their own policy to the 
expectation of seeing the North American Union disappear 
like a dream. In the general gloom which shut down over 
the whole horizon good men everywhere were ready to ex- 
claim, HAIL, HOLY LIGHT, — if only it might come from any 
quarter. What kind of statesmanship or learning or expe- 
rience could make a magistrate equal to such a work ? Di- 
plomacy could not save the flag then, eloquence could not 
start a throb beneath the ribs of that death, an arm of flesh 
could not hold a charm over the ingulfing waters and the 
dismantling ship. History, civilization, nay, almost tlie mer- 
cies of Heaven, we thought, were baffled in that day. Again> 
then, I ask, what kind of a President was needed, and would 
prove best appointed? You know how, for many months, 
before this man liad got rightly into the work, and before we 
could properly measure him, some of you sighed for a Jackson 
and others for a Webster to take the helm ; yet we now all 
believe that we have had the man raised up by God for this 
particular epoch, that few could have accomplished this mis- 
sion at all, and none so well. 



88 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

For he came to it devout, wise, patient, forecasting, and rich 
with insight. I read his Inaugural as a key to his whole 
policy for this strange time, and there I discern the dawn of 
the lustre of his qualities for administration, which blended a 
certain Eoman firmness with a Christian mediatorial talent. 
His wisdom began in this, that he knew he could not foresee 
all that might happen, and so he would gather the arms of 
his countrymen around him, and would keep step with the 
majestic marches of Providence. Never doubting that our 
jurisdiction would be recovered, always believing the conflict 
would be long and varied, he promised just enough to keep 
the element of hope uppermost in the country, and not too 
much to unfit the masses for their own great part. Clay or 
Webster in his chair might have restored the old Union a 
little sooner, with the loss of the moral sense of the world 
and with the cost of another revolt hereafter ; Jackson might 
have struck quicker and heavier blows, but an untimely blow 
then might have shivered this Union like glass. Our man 
had that tact and knowledge of men which only his training 
could have imparted. He knew his own West, and kept his 
hand constantly on her pulse ; he was in sympathy with the 
conscience of the East, and honored her culture and power ; 
and by his cultivation of the one and the other he kept them 
both in harmonious action to the end. The ancient countries 
affected delight and amusement at the sight of this son of the 
prairies succeeding to the work of kings, and putting his hand 
to an undertaking which comprised the destinies of a hemi- 
sphere. They could not understand that the question he had 
to deal with could receive little aid from statecraft or the 
previous education of a public man. They could not believe 
that new men are best for great crises ; that for such a ruler 
and for such a period Bunyan is a better master than all the 
Georges, and ^sop a keener teacher than both the Walpoles ; 
that in a trial of the national spirit and the national forces 
involving the issue of death at once or life perpetual to a 
nation, the study of Washington is higher than the schools ; 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 89 

that in sucli an emergency a single Cromwell is greater than 
a dozen earls out of Eton and Oxford. They forgot the con- 
solations of their own history, — that Marlborough had never 
read Xenophon or later martial historians, but somehow 
managed to triumph over veteran armies of France ; that 
Wellington was counted dull in his early life, and rose to 
victory and fame only by the buffet of trial, — and they did 
not stop to consider that Lincoln might ascend as conspicu- 
ously, and bring with liim a Grant, a Sherman, a Sheridan, as 
quickly and as triumphantly. All history, all examples, all 
instructions, are at fault in revolutions ; and our enemies at 
home and abroad were making mockery of the mysteries of 
providential interpositions all along the century processions of 
mankind, when they hesitated about our success, because our 
chief had no title save that which the Almighty had given 
him, no signet save that of the cabin, no learning save that to 
which the evening torch and the celestial orbs had lighted 
him. But he disappointed them all, passed beyond the boun- 
daries they had set for him within four years, — the shortest 
space ever illustrated by such distinction, — triumphed over 
a civil war of imperial proportions, and left a name to be re- 
corded and repeated in the courts of St. Louis, St. James, and 
St. Peter, among the inscriptions of a thousand years past and 
to come. So simple and rudimental in his origin and prepa- 
ration, not learned by the side of the masters, and not ignorant 
of himself, he came to a supremacy over the grandest epic of 
all countries, and gave triumphant direction to the greatest 
war of human annals. It will be the task of the historian 
and biographer to classify and present these high themes 
hereafter, but a few words ought to be said about them now 
over his new-made grave. 

Having neither the taste nor the education of a soldier, he 
so practised his intuitions as to become master of the field of 
war. If you consider how extended and complicated the 
objective field soon became, and how in consultation and 
oversight he was its director, it must occur to you, in reading 



90 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

his correspondence with the commanders, that his perceptions 
were clear and his judgment elementary and profound. How 
many toilsome and anxious hours he passed in the War 
Department, and how well he understood all that was trans- 
piring and all that ought to transpire, is made apparent in 
the letters he Idmself wrote to General McClellan during 
the fifteen months of his command. Eead them and re- 
read them, and you will agree that they evince, in a re- 
markable degree for a civilian, the military sense. Having 
committed to that officer an army of the flower of the 
land, he followed it with an interest alike parental and 
patriotic, studying the map of its marches and its hopes, 
breasting back while he could the impatience of the country, 
at all times suggesting his advice kindly to its chief, and 
finally, in those dark days which have made the name of the 
Chickahominy historical, transmitting a series of despatches 
from his own pen which could not have been better if he 
had possessed the genius of a soldier. He saw through the 
objective and the consequential of campaigns quite as clearly 
and quite as far as most of the generals who wore his stars. 
Under the pressure of military repulses he rose large as the 
occasion, and when his commanders were changing their base 
he held hopefully to his own. When retreat and disinte- 
gration had destroyed the last chance of entering Eichmond 
that season, and his chieftain called many times again for 
reinforcements, he telegraphed back a volume of present his- 
tory and future destiny in a few short, sharp, kind, hopeful 
words : " If we had a million of men we could not get them 
to you in time. We have not the men. If you are not 
strong enough to face the enemy, . . . save the army at all 
events, even if you fall back to Fort Monroe. We still have 
strength enough in the country, AND WILL BRING IT OUT." He 
had a large power of patience, which this war required. The 
people of the Nortli demanded a change of generals after 
each misfortune, but he saw difficulties they could not see, 
and tried one after the other long and tolerantly till he 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 91 

found the right one. That is the highest proof of adminis- 
trative talent, in war, which disregards a clamor, rejects 
instrumentalities only after they have been exhausted, and 
feels its way along the rounds of failure till it finds the 
choice that can sound the awful charge of victory. And 
thouCTh his arch-rival at Richmond had the consummate 
education and prestige of a soldier, the murmurs which 
swelled from his councils and his fields against him had 
double the volume of those which rose to the ears of your 
President from the fretful loyalty of the North ; and I venture 
the prediction, that if that history can ever be fully written, 
as ours will be, in military comprehension and appreciation, 
in that gift of insight which is the product of nature quite as 
much as of art or the academy, which reduces the involu- 
tions of armies and campaigns to simplicity and analysis, 
even in this, all this, which belongs to arms, our plain civ- 
ilian will be proved to have outwitted the other, educated 
soldier though he was. 

Then I cannot help thinking that, as a part of the military 
questions he had to treat, there were such grave matters of 
what I may call legislative jurisprudence as had not been 
thought of before. To weaken the rebellion by the destruc- 
tion of its civil rights, and this alike for purposes of punish- 
ment to treason and of strength to loyalty, — tliis, under our 
Constitution, which never contemplated such a crisis as the 
present, and under the mutual relations of national and State 
sovereignty, the delicacy of which had not been apprehended 
until now, required a statesmanship scarcely less than judi- 
cial. Would Heaven that our own Webster could have lived 
for this, to have sat as premier by the side of Lincoln, to have 
illustrated with unprecedented effect his colossal gifts ! It 
was a great thought — of withdrawing from half a people the 
rights of a national citizenship and of indefeasible republican 
immunities. The Congress and the President did not alto- 
gether agree. This is not the time to decide between them. 
Congress spoke the policy of prompt and final deliverance 



92 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

from the hateful aristocracy whose alleged rights, if not ut- 
terly extinguished in war, might prove a clog to freedom and 
nationality in peace. The President endeavored to blend 
and reconcile the supposed elements of the discordant rights 
of rebels under the Constitution and of loyalty in M^ar. I 
only allude to the subject to call your attention to the depth 
of the matter which underlay the military policy of the Ad- 
ministration, and to solicit your attention to the message of 
President Lincoln, July, 1862, in which, while he deferred in 
modesty to the representatives of the people, he stood upon his 
own responsibility, and displayed in bold relief the abilities 
of a technical lawyer and a constitutional jurist. There has 
been no better passage in his life by which he could have 
illustrated his caj)acity for the comprehensive field of an in- 
terstate and national war. 

And then I reckon it another striking feature of his mili- 
tary administration, that under all circumstances he took 
accountability and censure to himself We may acknowl- 
edge, once for all, that there was a modest, conscious power 
in that ; for no empirical experimentalist would have trusted 
himself to such a test, and the man must be well grounded in 
the popular confidence who can bear it. Point me to any 
one person in the British Administration who was willing to 
stand out solitary and responsible when the people criticised 
the campaigns of their generals in the peninsula of Spain or 
the Crimea. Piather than that, the responsibility could only 
be found distributed among the unknown and mystical im- 
personalities of the Cabinet and the Privy Council. Your 
President, on the other hand, sought no shelter from criticism. 
In the first year of the war, when Congress passed a vote of 
censure upon one of his Department Secretaries, he sent them 
a message assuming the responsibility to himself; Jackson 
would have done the same, but no other man since his day. 
In the second year, when another Secretary of War was ar- 
raigned by large numbers of the people for having enforced 
the failure of McClellan in the Peninsula by withholding 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 93 

reinforcements, Mr. Lincoln came gallantly to the response 
and claimed that the attack should be pointed against liis 
own breast ; and his despatches to that General, since pub- 
lished, show that he could well afford to receive the attack. 
He wrote his own messages, generally directed his command- 
ers, not regularly consulted his Cabinet, and, I believe, fre- 
quently overruled them when he did. He felt that he was 
personally accountable to the people for the triumphant de- 
fence of the Union. He, and no other, before his election, 
and in his Inaugural, had drawn the outlines within which 
the glory of his country might be found, and now like a wise 
man he relied on his own prayerful study and on his own 
keen instincts for ability to fill out the outlines with the 
colors that shall give eternal beauty to the picture of united 
America. In this I admire equally his magnanimity and his 
courage. Fortunate for us, that he was willing to take such 
responsibility. Many and many a time, when cypress instead 
of laurel bound the eagles of the army, happy and hopeful 
were M-e all if only we might believe that Mr. Lincoln had 
ordered the risk and the shock ; we cared little for his min- 
isters, but we trusted unsuspectingly in him ; when our re- 
proaches rose almost to mutiny in the North, if only he would 
say, in me, in me vertite tela, from that moment as by a charm 
the tumult subsided. It is a great relief in the discourage- 
ments and troubles of war, to rest upon the one man who is 
above all the others ; it is a greater thing if that man can 
justify and warrant such a rest and solace. In this power of 
impressment is a good part of a ruler's greatness. And thus 
we trace to him even the brilliant conduct of others ; for 
since he willed it, they performed it. It is the eulogy of 
Lincoln to say that much which others performed he sug- 
gested, and was willing to be held responsible for it. Said the 
ablest of Englishmen, " The minister who does those things 
is a great man ; but the king who desires that they should 
be done is a far greater." 

How can I within the limits of these remarks speak fitly 



94 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

or sufficiently of the part he bore in the cause of emanci- 
pation ? Think what lieight and depth stood in the way, — 
how history and Providence only shed darkness over his ap- 
proaches, — how the free States were rent by conflicting opin- 
ions, — how he had to institute a new policy, which, if it might 
succeed, would invest the Government with immortal life, 
but if it should fail, would wreck the nation and shroud his 
own name in ignominy forevermore. It was a necessity 
which he had not anticipated. It took fifteen months of war 
to discover the strength of the rebellion and the weakness of 
the Government ; and when the alternative came at length, it 
presented sombre and frightful proportions. To destroy slav- 
ery he had not been elected, nor for that had he called the 
people to arms ; the only duty for him, and that which he 
judged most pleasing to God, was to save this Union from 
dissolution. You remember how, after our flag had begun to 
trail in defeat, voices here and there raised this issue upon 
him in terms alike beseeching and threatening. Still what 
could he do better or more than balance the conflict of magis- 
terial ethics, study the contradictory omens of the sky, feel 
the heart of his country, and search after the will of the last 
arbiter ? Undoubtedly, he thought the necessity of emanci- 
pation might come, probably it would come ; but it would 
come as a question of arms and must be supported by public 
opinion. That was the day of all which tried him as a 
statesman. 

In the presence of such a question, large enough to occupy 
the thouglits and agitations of a generation, behold the unam- 
bitious practical statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln. No age 
has been blessed with a better. We are constantly looking 
back through the coloring medium of distance to the brilliant 
lights of the past, and desponding over the present and the 
future. But the statesmen of one age are unfitted for the 
requirements of another. Peel was as great for his time as 
Chatham or Bolingbroke for theirs. From the magnificent 
success of our late President we have learned the right defi- 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 95 

nitioD of a wise ruler. If it be his labor to initiate a measure 
that shall stand out among the beneficent acts that mark 
historical periods, it is his still more jiainful and vexatious 
work to commend it to public approval ; he has to enlighten 
the ignorance of some, and to convince the intelligence of 
others; he has to combat honest prejudices, and modify in- 
terested opposition; if he would move with strength and 
certainty towards the success which is ahead, he has to halt 
in his steps, and clip his propositions, and qualify his words, 
and emasculate his theories ; if he would be strong to place 
his country among the positions his genius has pictured for 
her, he must apparently enfeeble his policy to conciliate one 
class and clog it with burdens to satisfy another. The mod- 
ern statesman must combine patient temper, persevering will, 
and sound knowledge of men ; he ml^st discern the present 
tone and probable direction of public opinion ; he must dis- 
tinguish between intelligent and unintelligent censure, and 
he must know how much of public outcry can safely be dis- 
regarded, as well as that amount which he cannot afford to 
withstand. 

Such statesmanlike qualities Mr. Lincoln ilkistrated in 
those many months of hesitation, anxiety, seeming then al- 
most inability to act, which ushered in that day on which he 
emerged from his closet, bearing in his own arms the efful- 
gent guidon of EMANCIPATION. I religiously believe that he 
was right, all aloncr, from the stammering beginning to the 
clarion-like finality. You goaded him too soon, too often, 
and too long : he was the while in consultation with the 
counsellors around him, with his little learning and his large 
reflection, with all of history he had read, with tlie fathers 
and the prophets. AVhile editors and orators stirred strife 
and commotion in the country and in the Senate Chamber 
over his long withholding of the decree, he continued im- 
passive in his purpose, and remembered that one of the 
instructive characters in his favorite Bunyan was "a grave 
and beautiful damsel named Discretion." And so I conceive 



96 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

that he was right upon this question in that which some of 
us thought his dalliance with the States of the border, right 
also when he countermanded Fremont's military order of 
freedom, right again when he recalled the similar rescript of 
Hunter, right as well in his letter to Mr. Greeley, and right 
at last when the angels announced the hour and he sent forth 
the Decree of Emancipation triumphant and irrevocable 
while the earth shall stand. Then he said : " I have done 
this after a very full deliberation, and under a very heavy 
and solemn sense of responsibility. I can only trust in God 
I have made no mistake. It is now for the country and the 
world to pass judgment." 

Yes, yes, that judgment his country and the world have 
already passed. His returning armies share their laurels 
with him and pay their resounding fusillade over the turf 
which covers their father and their friend ! But higher hon- 
ors await him ! A nation rescued from the tyranny whose 
roots have spread over two centuries, never relenting, never 
appeased, a race delivered from thraldom and elevated to the 
hopes of civilization and Christianity, shall walk to the beat 
of peaceful marches about his tomb till the resurrection ! 
And wherever Freedom shall have a home, or America a 
name, or Washington a praise, over the whole globe, mankind 
shall revere the memory of him who sealed the baptism of 
emancipation with his own blood ! 

And I desire for myself to express the opinion that no 
monument that may be erected to commemorate his name 
can rise so high or endure so long as that whose foundations 
shall be laid in those immutable and universal rights of man 
for wdiich he gave his life. As the emancipation of four mil- 
lions became the necessity of his policy for the preservation 
of the Union, so let us extend to the emancipated race all the 
rights of citizenship, if we would make our safety certain and 
final. If, under a democratic government, universal suffrage 
is worth anything in the North, then is universal suffrage a 
paramount necessity in the South. Is it republican, demo- 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 97 

cratic, or safe, to exclude from the j)olls a majority of the loyal 
population of the Southern States ? Your sons have been 
maimed and slain in vain if the aristocracy which was the 
cause and support of the war shall not be shorn of every dis- 
tinction, if the oligarchy shall not have its roots plucked to 
their uttermost fibre out of the land. 

I do not forget to-day that probably one half of all those 
who now help to extend the funeral train have, at one time 
or another in four years, pronounced their complaint that Mr. 
Lincoln was too much the follower, not sufficiently the leader, 
of jDublic opinion. The stern tribunal of history adjusts all 
such accounts as that. The immortal Washington opened his 
mission at Cambridge under the same necessities of limitation 
that have bounded the horizon of Lincoln. He entered the 
war in advance of the issue, and had to await the develop- 
ments of events which made separation and independence the 
sublime ultimatum. I concede that the late President waited 
on public opinion ; and when you reflect how abnormal and 
stupendous w^as the cause he had to manage, I will thank 
you to tell me if waiting on public opinion was not waiting 
on Providence itself. Tell me if the success or loss of the 
whole, to us and to distant generations, did not depend on 
the spirit of the people. Public sentiment is the arbiter of 
republican destinies. But public sentiment, — what is it here 
with us but the product, not precisely the average quantity, 
but the result and the product of the intuitions, instincts, 
sagacities, and reflections of the millions of America, — the 
crystallization of the myriad forces of democracy, — to be 
ascertained by tlie President only after incessant labor and 
study and retrospection; then, when with satisfactory cer- 
tainty ascertained, to be not only consulted but to be received 
and accepted as in the nature of inspiration and decree to 
the magistrate. He who keeps pace with this requisition is 
neither quite a leader nor quite a follower, but a representa- 
tive, administrator, and executor, — all and everything which 
a democratic constitution will ask for or can permit. Mr. 

7 



^8 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

Lincoln understood and adopted this construction of states- 
manship better than I can analyze it. He sought neither to 
lead public opinion nor consented to follow it. No man 
could, with greater force or justice than he, repeat the remark 
which Edmund Burke made in his own justification to his 
constituents, — that he did not follow public opinion, but 
only went out to meet it on the way. This alone gave 
your President his power. I do not forget that there are 
occasions in which the statesman, like the leader in the field, 
may organize and direct the strategic movements of public 
action. But in the march of civilization issues ripen, events 
come, and men advance to the conflict. A man, an accident, 
a trifle, hastens or retards the battle, but the single man does 
not make the revolution nor quell the storm. In tlie signifi- 
cant epochs of history or final clash of arms, the statesman 
can discern the occasions, the opportunities, and the neces- 
sities of the hour, but his greatness and glory are largely the 
product of the times. An English journalist has just said of 
the lamented Mr. Cobden, that " his limitations as a states- 
man constituted his greatness as a representative thinker." 
I like the expression and the philosophy of it. I could coin 
no better phrase with which to define the wise statesmanship 
of Mr. Cobden's friend on this side of the water. Seeking 

NOT TO TRANSCEND HIS LIMITATIONS AS A STATESMAN, HE MADE 
HIMSELF THE REPRESENTATIVE THINKER OF HIS COUNTRY AND 

HIS TIME. That is his glory to-day, and can never become his 
weakness or his shame. Of course such an understanding of 
the policy and the duty of a national magistrate subjects liim,' 
as Mr. Lincoln for a time was subjected, to the imputation of 
over-cautious timidity; but a just posterity, nay, the sagacious 
present generation, will expunge the criticism and open to 
him the pathway to justice. So, if I remember correctly, the 
policy of Fabius was by some called cowardice, or at least 
timidity, in his day ; but I believe it prepared the way for 
the avenging armies of Scipio. So, as I liave read, the vene- 
rated Washington was characterized and criticised in his time 



ABKAHAM LINCOLN. 99 

also ; but I have the impression that Yorktown and the Con- 
stitution and eight years of magisterial glory constituted his 
vindication. So, as I have observed, Lincoln was summoned 
to submit to the same test of fame ; and so we all see this 
day that his name ascends henceforth among the stars. 

His speech, though not uniform, was not unworthy of his 
action. Consider how opposite are the requisitions in this 
respect which empires make upon their rulers, and take the 
two leading powers of the East and the West for the illustra- 
tion. The Czar of Russia, — blessed be his fortunes evermore 
for that early and timely friendship which he bestowed upon 
our country and our President, when the cabinets on either 
shore of the fitful and vengeful Channel offered us only the 
scowling welcome of intimidation and hypocrisy, — to whom, 
some day, in the alternations of our interuationalities, the 
shade of assassinated innocence shall stalk in terror and 
retribution over all the seas they arrogate, — that Czar of 
Eussia, all the way from Peter or Catherine to the latest 
Alexander, wields dominion with action and without words. 
That is the condition of his rule, nor is it our business or 
our pleasure to find fault with it there. The genius of 
America is another. Here the President is the selected 
agent of the people, and must respond whenever they call 
for his reasons. No President before Lincoln ever had so 
many and such calls. They came from Congress, from every 
State, from associations, from delegations, from individual 
men, from spontaneous assemblages under a hundred moon- 
lights on the lawn around the executive mansion. He had 
a word for them all. True it is, he had still that greatest 
gift of a magistrate, — the power of reticence, tlie masterly 
talent of suppression, wlienever the occasion required it. He 
let them off with his joke and his Western wit whenever that 
was all they ought to have. In this sometimes, and too fre- 
quently, he reduced the dignity of his office ; but it was the 
relief-valve which he had received from his Maker. Yet, 
beside all this, so many were his necessities of public speaking, 



100 ADDEESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

that no one of his predecessors had been tried in that way 
so often. He spoke good things from the windows of the 
White House, as he had spoken them before on the prairies. 
They shall be handed over to you and to your children, and 
you shall say that I do not praise them too highly. You shall 
find some shade and beauty beneath their pine and oaken 
leaves. You shall say that he spoke and wrote with much of 
the simplicity, quaintness, and power of Franklin, and the 
elemental mastery of our tongue. Many were his occasional 
speeches, and one of them at least will be imperishable for 
its felicity and brevity. Lord Macaulay assures us that Bar- 
rister Somers, in a speech of five minutes in the Court of 
King's Bench, established the enduring fame of an orator. 
Mr. Lincoln, by a speech of only that duration at Gettysburg, 
divided the honors of the day with the transcendent Everett, 
and inscribed his name on the tombstone of every soldier 
whose ashes there await the rising of the quick and the dead. 
His state papers are more lasting than these. His messages 
to Congress have already passed into the national literature ; 
they were read at the time in the courts of France and Eng- 
land ; and though they may have been obliterated or obscured 
there by royal art, they will reappear for luminous and pro- 
phetic reading when Europe and America shall settle their 
accounts. 

In these state papers posterity will recognize a style of 
power that is not more unique in its form than in its pro- 
duced effect. It is in sympathy with the national character- 
istics and with the traditional choice of the people. His 
mind was acute, logical, and subtle ; and that they appreciate. 
In the time of her casuistry and refinement the public teach- 
ers of Greece found no heartier reception than wit and reason 
find now in America from Maine to Nevada. Mr. Lincoln 
had studied the first and second sight of his countrymen, till 
he could address them with a direction that seldom failed. 
Then he secured their favor, and I may say pleased their 
senses, by a geniality and humor which smoothed their asper- 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 101 

ities, conquered their prejudices, and attracted their hearts to 
him and his cause. Even in the winter of their discontent, 
when arms were unsuccessful and taxes were high, he led 
them, as through the gorgeousness and serenity of an Indian 
summer, to new campaigns and heavier burdens and coming 
victories, From 'G2 to '64 such was the power of his written 
and spoken words. In statement and argument he struck 
deeper and richer veins than his supposed education would 
have suggested. I think we are quite apt to be in error as to 
this whole matter of education. When and where did Ham- 
ilton acquire his ? — for he left college a boy, before his time, 
and saw no schools afterwards save the camp, the cabinet, and 
the bar ; yet he proved the finest intellect of his time. In- 
form me, if you can, whence came the education of Lincoln, 
who never trod the floors of a college. I only know that we 
do not know what may have been his study in a lazy, unlim- 
ited, unconditioned Western life. I do know, what he stated 
when last he was in New England five years ago, on the eve 
and in the expectation of his honors, that, after he had tried 
the study of the law and had found himself cornered, he 
went into retirement for some months, and studied Euclid 
till he understood it from root to outermost branch. And so 
doubtless he went through more than we know of the strug- 
gle and ecstasy of educating himself. However that may 
have been, and whenever or wherever he may have acquired 
the power, you and I know that he could reason with 
a straightforwardness and incisiveness which Harvard or 
Princeton might be proud to honor. This is not the extrava- 
ganza of eulogy ; peruse, as I have perused, his written and 
spoken addresses, from Illinois in '58 to his last and singular 
Inaugural, and you shall say the same. I will not particular- 
ize out of them all, save one. Take up and read critically 
his published letter to Erastus Corning and his committee, 
covering the whole question of the suspension of the habeas 
corj'yus and tlie subjection of the civil to military law, and it 
shall be your impartial judgment that in a broad statement 



102 ADDEESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

of public safety and historical law it is not unworthy of 
Hamilton, in purity and legitimacy of style it is scarcely in- 
ferior to the papers of the same master, and in just com- 
prehensiveness and ingenuous patriotism it would reflect 
credit upon the tender heart and robust nationalism of 
Washington. I admired it when it first appeared, and now 
after a second and third reading I think it to be the best of 
all his papers. 

The moral and humane qualities of the good President set 
off and gilded his term. Did you ever know a potentate 
whose rule bore such blazonry of events, civic and martial, 
and whose daily life was so simple, plain, and temperate ? I 
believe that not Sir Matthew Hale kept sterner vigil over 
private and of&cial hours, over the shrine of the domestic 
sanctuary. Success was his aim and duty his guide, and he 
saw little time for display or amusement or ostentation. 
In four years of labor, which would have broken like a reed 
any man of less iron cast, he not once got time to revisit the 
State and city of his love, seldom left the capital unless to 
visit the tents, hospitals, or graves of his soldiers, and once 
only came so far as the North to consult on the national 
safety with a retired chieftain. He gave attentive ear to 
humblest men and women, was as faithful in small acts of 
kindness as in great acts of justice, as amiable in little things 
in private as in high matters of state. 

His magnanimity became proverbial. His soul was no 
nursery for a brood of resentments. He conferred the bars 
and stars and eagles of war generously upon those who had 
not given him a vote or a sympathy, if only they were true 
to the flag. He bared his own breast to the brunt of many 
an assault aimed at Cameron or Stanton or McClellan, al- 
lowed them the honors, and took to himself the swarming 
reproaches. In a serenade on the evening after his second 
election, when the impassioned majority would have dishon- 
ored the name of his rival, he spoke for him grand words of 
charity and justice. A specific instance of his truthful mag- 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 103 

nanimity I must uufold to you, as it has been related to me 
upon the best of authority. On a certain morning many 
months before Chief Justice Taney died, his immediate de- 
cease was pronounced in Washington as certain. In anti- 
cipation of the supposed impending death our senior Senator 
called iipon Mr. Lincoln and discussed with him the impor- 
tance of appointing Mr. Chase to fill the expected vacancy. 
The President at length gave the assurance. But the Chief 
Justice renewed his lease of life, and many months lapsed 
away. ]\Ieanwhile, between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Chase, in 
the council of administration, divergences arose. At length 
in July, '64, the latter laid the key of the exchequer upon 
the President's table. He accepted the resignation without 
hesitation. Then came Senators to his room to urge the re- 
appointment or restoration of Mr. Chase to the Treasury, — 
for that juncture reflected dark shadows over our finances. 
" No, no," said Mr. Lincoln, " for between him and me there 
is an incompatibility for the same council. But this, you 
will bear in mind, would not prevent me from honoring Mr. 
Chase in any other high sphere of the Government." Half a 
year afterwards the Chief Justice died, but not before Mr. 
Chase had sprinkled along his travels in New England sharp 
and disparaging words of criticism upon the President. And 
yet the same President, faithful to his promise and his duty, 
forgetful of wrong and injustice to himself, conferred upon 
his late secretary the appointment, and placed the jurispru- 
dence of the United States and the rights of human nature 
under perpetual obligations to his magnanimity. 

He believed in God. You know how he left his home for 
Washington in February, '61, in his parting words requesting 
that his neighbors would array in his support tlie mysterious 
power of the legions of prayer ; and after he had assumed his 
high trust at the capital he cultivated that religious life 
which is the best guaranty of a nation's triumph. While 
war, according to its prescriptive laws, opened all the avenues 
of inconsideration and levity to others, he drew his consola- 



104 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

tions and refreshed bis courage at tlie never-failing fountains 
of Divine mercy. It was this, added to his humorous and 
sunny views, which bore him upward and onward tlirougb such 
a regime of four years as never had been allotted to a head 
that wore a crown. And therefore all the people believed in 
him. More distinctly than any other President since Wash- 
ington he irradiated the official j)athway at all times and in 
all places with the conspicuous publicity of Christian ethics. 
When Canning in Parliament opposed the humanity of slav- 
ery abolition, he declared in classic words that it was imprac- 
ticable to apply to politics those pure abstract principles 
which are indispensable to the excellence of private ethics. 
That was English, and almost worthy of a court whose official 
philanthropy is now proved to have been another name for 
the ambition of commercial and jDolitical ascendency. Ac- 
cordingly Great Britain could not conceal surprise at the 
novelty of Mr. Lincoln's theory of Christian ethics as a rule 
for official conduct ; and the difference between us will have 
to be postponed to the adjustments which are yet to come of 
American and European ideas. 

Your President was kind and tender to a fault. This led 
him into some mistakes, but his magnanimity corrected them. 
So he yielded somewliat to the rebel Campbell at Eichmond, 
and gave what might have proved a fatal order to Weitzel, but 
revoked it on the last day of his life when he discovered his 
error. I suspect that if he had lived for the reconstruction, 
he would have made several such mistakes ; but I know 
that he would have rectified and retrieved them. I do not 
think he would have executed the traitor who set up as his 
rival for history. Yet, after all, as the morning of victory 
opened on his sight, and as the hour of his own translation 
drew nigh, I love to recur to the benignity of his purposes 
towards the most wicked of men. In his last consultation 
with his Cabinet, a few hours before his departure, his heart 
melted before the appalling claims of Justice. I think, how- 
ever, he only meant to say, — 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 105 

" I shall temper so 
Justice with mercy, as may illustrate most 
Them fully satisfied, and thee appease." 

Nay, more, I catch the language of his last Inaugural for his 

eulogy, — "WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE, WITH CHARITY FOR 

ALL." Lofty words ! He knew not what those men had in 
preparation for him, and the Lord in his infinite mercy was 
preparing him to go at their bidding, whispering as he as- 
cended, " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they 
do ! " 

As you look backward along the galleries of history, you 
are surprised when you think how few are found whose fame 
has outlived their period or country, how few have passed 
into the constellations of immortal light. Those only are 
privileged with that imperishable distinction whose record 
gleams forth above the wreck of contemporary annals, whose 
labors place an entire nation, or many generations, or all man- 
kind, under the remembrance of debt and oblio-ation. To 
that judgment, ubiquitous and everlasting, Washington passed 
sixty-five years ago. From that day to ours, out of the long 
list of American Presidents, however marked their own talent 
or their own period, no one of them all before has, in the full 
sense of universal humanity and fame, given special dignity, 
or unlimited praise, or immortal renown, to America through 
time and space. But such has been the mission of Abraham 
Lincoln. However we should have estimated him four years 
ago as to the limitation of his previous life, or his natural 
parts, or his acquired culture, now that the four years have 
passed it has become apparent that Almighty God had se- 
lected him for world-wide honor and benignity. 

I appropriate to him the language of our own fellow- 
citizen and historian, Mr. Motley, which he applied to Wil- 
liam of Orange : — 

" No man was ever more devoted to a high purpose : no 
man had ever more right to imagine himself, or less inclina- 
tion to pronounce himself, intrusted with a divine mission. 



106 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

There was nothing of the charlatan in his character. His 
nature was true and steadfast. No narrow-minded usurper 
was ever more loyal to his own aggrandizement than this 
large-hearted man to the cause of oppressed humanity. Yet 
it was inevitable that baser minds should fail to recognize his 
purity. Tt was natural for grovelling natures to search in the 
gross soil of self-interest for the sustaining roots of the tree be- 
neath whose branches a nation found its shelter. What could 
they comprehend of living fountains or of heavenly dews ?" 

But his untimely hour had come. You remember the 
fatal evening only too well already, and I do not desire to 
disturb your sensibilities by anything more than this allu- 
sion to it. In our poetry and art and annals, that 14th of 
April shall henceforth be known and remembered as the noche 
triste, — the sorrowful night. The just and good magistrate 
then went away out of our sight. 

The flag on spire, pinnacle, and cottage had scarcely been 
restored from its depression of mourning, nor the muffled 
drum had ceased to beat, when the rival of the dead, the rep- 
resentative cause of our sorrows, was overtaken by retribution. 
He enjoys this evening his reflections u^Don history and 
providence and judgment in the hospitality of the noblest 
fortress of the Union, on a bed around which tlie shade of 
the murdered President would fain marshal " angels and min- 
isters of grace " to protect him. Who in all the earth cares 
now what shall become of him ? But whenever or wher- 
ever or however his time shall terminate, between him and 
the vile dust to whicli he shall descend there is only the brief 
hour of the life of a criminal, to be succeeded by the re- 
proaches of his contemporary countrymen, North and South, 
the heavy-pressing judgments of all posterity and of the 
eternal God. No matter when or where or how Jefferson 
Davis shall die, his death cannot be less ignominious than 
that of the assassin who performed his purpose, and all 
generations shall welcome him to the immortality of the 
representative Traitor of the race ! 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 107 

But another guerdon awaits our President. He sought to 
save, not to destroy. He labored to uphold the pillars of the 
Temple whose grace and beauty, if magistrates prove faithful, 
can never decay. He studied policy and wisdom day and 
night in a civil war which cost him his life, that his country 
might live, and fought treason on every line and in every 
trench over half the States, that democratic government in 
America might shine forth to cheer and animate and guide 
mankind to the remotest bounds of the world and of time. 

He ransomed four millions of his own countrymen from 
the thraldom of two hundred years, and died under the blow 
of slavery in the ecstasy of the sight. No matter when or 
where or how death should come to him, — for Abraham 
Lincoln has completed the work which George Washington 
began, — to his victories, great and unapproachable, he has 
added such triumphs as war never contemplated before, to 
the broad field of his civic glory he has imparted a still 
broader radiance ; and he now goes from our presence into 
the presence of other ages, garlanded with the double honor 
of Eestorer and Liberator ! 



A COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS 

delivered at royalston, mass., aug. 23, 1865, at the hundredth anni- 
versary of the incorporation of the town. 

Natives and Relatives of Royalston, — 

Friends and Fellow-Citizens : 

Under this spacious awning, on this church lawn and 
training-field of tlie fathers, we have assembled to commemo- 
rate the birthday of our native town. After the lapse of a 
century from its first chartered existence, when the men who 
made the beginning have so long rested from their labors 
that the same mould of time has gathered over their names 
and over their dust, and their heroic courage and Christian 
endurance have been partially forgotten for the want of an- 
nals, and this rolling territory has passed out of its forest 
infancy into the maturity of cultured fields, ample dwellings, 
and an elevated social life, we meet, not so mucli for the re- 
cital of a scanty history, as to indulge in the emotions of the 
anniversary, and to bid the next generation hail ! And yet, 
whatever the contrast may be of the past with the present, 
this hour witnesses the homage of a people plain like their 
ancestors, among whom the conventionalities of civilization 
have introduced but little of artificial rule, or thought, or 
custom of life, — around whom the hills and valleys still echo 
the ancient simplicity. Our home and birthplace offers no 
boast of the early or later days. Our town has only moved 
without eclat in the paths of an hundred years of allegiance 
to Christ and the State, — has without pretence to fame 
responded to every requisition of peace and war, — has con- 



COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS AT ROYALSTON, MASS. 109 

stantly kept its step, sometimes feebly, but at all times 
according to its ability, in the marches of public growth and 
enterprise, until in the grand results of this day it appears in 
the sisterhood of the municipalities, asking no higher renown 
than to be credited with having been in every emergency 
honest, truthful, and faithful. The just man can rest upon 
such a foundation ; the just town can erect its centennial 
banner upon a ground so simple and broad as that. With 
such claim to historical justice and historical participation 
this ancient municipality now calls us all back under the 
shade of her roof-tree ; and we are proudly satisfied to cele- 
brate the day. 

I have alluded to the paucity of our annals. The records 
of the town are considerably meagre, inexplicit, and unsatis- 
factory. Many reasons might possibly be assigned for this ; 
but that which seems to be most conclusive is also most 
creditable to this community. The town and the church 
have from the beginning been exempt from those civil and 
ecclesiastical controversies Mdiich have left upon the records 
of most other communities of New England full and volu- 
minous materials for history. I find nothing of that sort in 
your public chest. The life and action of these generations 
here have been so peaceful and so regular that the clerk has 
had little to enter upon his book. I apprehend that scarcely 
an ancient town of the State can present a parallel with this. 
Such has been the uniformity, the harmony, the serenity, of 
this smooth current of population, from the commencement 
until now, that the present occasion is furnished with little 
that is eventful and with nothing that is dramatic. A town 
far away from the sea, and therefore without the inspiring 
excitement of ocean commerce, — a precinct that bears no 
vestiges of the aborigines, and is in this respect so unlike 
the more southerly towns, which had half a century of life 
crowded with Indian traditions, that I cannot find that those 
original lords ever lighted a pipe or a fire here, — a church 
without a schism in a century, — a ministry that never knew 



110 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

how to quarrel, — a people that have walked the paths of 
unambitious duty, — these make our record uninteresting for 
the public address. But these also make our claim to the 
highest distinction of municipal fame. This equable progress 
of four generations, without anything that is startling in savage 
or civilized adventure, has made our history comparatively 
tame ; but it is the tameness of beneficence, of a people who 
have been content without observation to pour the ceaseless 
tributaries of a small and distant town into the swelling vol- 
ume of the growth, the power, and the renown of the State. 

And yet, simple and unpretending as is the connection of 
this town with the origin and development of the whole of 
America, the founders of these local habitations were allies 
and partakers in the great scheme of the settlement of a new 
world. In accordance with the law of colonization their 
names share the radiance of the sun from the east. They 
moved under the star of empire to glorious co-operation in 
the possession of the noblest inheritance of the race. The 
municipalities of Massachusetts have an honor altogether 
their own as a part of the instrumentalities which have 
borne the standard of Christian republicanism to the west- 
ern limits of the continent. Our own ancestors had a share 
in that blessed lineage, and in that dark and bloody expe- 
rience of a century and a half, of which this age enjoys the 
marvellous fruition. The divine beauty of the present has 
come to us out of the inappreciable sufferings of the past. 
The angel choirs which have accompanied the divinity of 
modern liberty, which sang amid the sighing pines around 
Geneva, and chanted as escort to a representative state and a 
representative church in the first settlement of this ancient 
colony, and sweetened those first years of want and famine 
and pestilential terrors, have passed over these fields in their 
coming. All the days of the Puritans, all the scenes of their 
pilgrimage, — Plymouth out of Leyden, Massachusetts Bay 
out of Plymouth, all the towns of Worcester North out of 
Massachusetts Bay, — from the landing on the rock to the 



COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS AT ROYALSTON, MASS. Ill 

M'ar of King Philip, thence to the French wars, and onward 
to the Eevolution, and the Constitution and all the glories 
under it, — over the long track, everywhere, it is a unity, a 
connection, one providence, one succession, one agency, in 
which they who lighted their camp fires in the face of 
Indians in Lancaster and Brookfield and they who cleared 
fields in the presence of wild beasts in Terapleton and Eoy- 
alston were pursuing a common destiny for the success of a 
republican church and an American liberty. And so we 
have a part to-day with the founders of the New England 
polity, whose mark is over the whole continent. There was 
a natural order in the settlement of these towns. English 
colonization in America wisely adopted the seaboard as its 
base and extended its operations to the interior. In this 
order of the possession and clearing of the country our own 
town came late, being more remote than any other in the 
county from the seminal sources of the State. Some of the 
towns in the southerly part of the county were occupied by 
the Anglo-American an hundred years earlier than this. In- 
deed, of the entire territory of Worcester County, as the same 
was disposed of by grants and charters, our own town is the 
junior of all by many years; for although our neighbors, 
Templeton and Athol, were both incorporated on the same 
day, only about three years before us, and Winchendon pre- 
ceded us by only a single year of its charter, yet, as to all 
those towns, grants of lands and settlements had been made 
much earlier, varying from twenty to thirty years. The 
wave of occupation seemed to pause immediately below our 
border for some years. This being frontier territory, an 
outside row was left for a long time unplanted. Nor was 
this fact without its advantages ; for though our late coming 
into the family of charters has cut us off from some of the 
excitements of early traditions, which I greatly appreciate 
as stimulations to public character, it gave to tlie early set- 
tlers here the benefits of the maturity of the possessions 
surrounding them. So that while the first occupants of 



112 ADDEESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

Atbol were obliged to maintain a garrison against the In- 
dians who had kept a seat there to a late day, the triumph and 
success which followed were appropriated to the security of 
the first comers in Eoyal-shire. But the special advantage 
of coming after our sisters of the county is better illustrated 
by the fact that the novitiate of colonization, the interim be- 
tween settlement and municipality, was thus made so brief 
that between the first planting and the first fruit there was 
scarcely an appreciable space of time ; for while it occurred 
in other parts of this county that thirty and. forty years 
elapsed after settlement before municipal incorporation, that 
intervening period was represented here by only the interval 
of three years. These lands v/ere scarcely known as a value 
to the first shrewd proprietors at Boston before the town 
itself took a place in the provincial records as a living 
community, a political power, a participator in the fortunes 
of the Commonwealth. Thus there was no infancy here ; it 
was robust manhood from the start. 

The territory of this town has undergone many changes, 
and indeed was a subject of some uncertainty at the outset. 
June 4, 1752, a vote was approved in Council ordering a sale 
of the lands north of Pequoig, now Athol, and onward to the 
province line. The purpose was to clear the map ; and so 
effectually was this accomplished, that the surveyor's chain 
swept in a strip of several miles in length lying along the 
whole northern boundary of Winchendon, separating it from 
the province line, which had been inadvertently omitted in 
the survey of that town, and this was afterwards called the 
" Koyalston Leg." For obvious reasons the limb proved an 
encumbrance, and was severed in 1780, when these many 
acres, which had come to us like an estray, were transferred 
to Winchendon. Under the sovereignty of our king the 
township was sold at public vendue. This form of procedure, 
under which the country itself had been ceded by charters 
and was afterwards parcelled out, was a part of that policy 
which, following up tlie law of discovery and conquest by 



COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS AT ROYALSTON, MASS. 113 

internal settlement and improvement, has made England the 
great power of the earth, under which she even now plants 
her authority and extends her civilization alike in India and 
in North America. The purchasers and first proprietors of 
our town were men of exalted names and characters. And 
although they were proprietors only, not settlers, yet I cannot 
doubt that association with so much of fame and virtue left 
impressions of manliness and honor upon those who came and 
remained here. Samuel Watts, Thomas Hubbard, Isaac Eoyal, 
James Otis, Isaac Freeman, and others, for the consideration 
of £1,348, took the title to 28,357 acres, exclusive of former 
private grants. Tliese grants, amounting to 1,700 acres, are 
known in the archives at the State House as Pierpont's, 
Priest's, and Hapgood's. In accordance with the wise policy 
of the government of that day, — a policy which has been 
continued by the General Government since our independence 
in every time of war, and at no time so liberally as in our 
recent conflict with the Rebellion, — the sovereign power had 
bestowed these grants as bounties for military services ren- 
dered. I call them military services, for such they were, 
whether rendered in the field or at home in support of the 
field. The name attached to one of these grants has become 
a part of the local geography and daily life of the town. The 
name of Priest, who received 300 acres as a recognition of his 
loyalty in extending the hospitality of his half-way house, 
near the easterly line of the town, to all those who passed 
that way to and from the French wars, will endure while the 
beautiful river which bears his name shall continue to flow. 
And so long as the calm flow of its waters shall continue, so 
long shall live the memories of that service which associates 
your town with the pioneers and the rangers, with the Lily of 
France, with Louisburg, with that fidelity to the crown of our 
king in those days which I cannot but like, with those wars 
for our royal Georges whicli prepared and educated our fathers 
afterward to o^'erwhelm all kings in the Revolution. I have 
lived in this town long enough to have learned that in the 

8 



114 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

trade of land we can calculate as closely as other men ; and 
let me remind you that we inherit the talent from an honor- 
able ancestry. I find in the Massachusetts Archives, Vol. 
XLVL, that the same Watts, Eoyal, and Otis at length discov- 
ered that, as far back as 1737, the Court had made a private 
grant of 600 acres to Benoni Moore and others, afterwards 
assigned to one Hunt, and thenceforward known under his 
name, and that the location had been taken by him in the 
very heart of the best land, 200 acres of which, however, had 
somehow been relinquished ; whereupon they claimed other 
acres as good somewhere else in the province, or an equivalent 
relief Certainly this seemed a very plausible land claim, 
and the allowance was voted. Subsequently it appears, by 
the report of a committee, that after the allowance of the 
claim, a correct survey disclosed that these proprietors had 
originally taken 500 acres more than their deed expressed, 
and more than they paid for, leaving them quite largely in 
debt to the province, which I cannot see that they ever made 
good, though probably the advantage does not inure to any 
present landholder of Eoyalston. 

And so your town began under a territorial proprietorship 
of 30,577 acres, the private grants included. In 1780 the 
unmanageable Leg, estimated at about 2,000 acres, was set off 
to Winchendon. In 1783 several thousand acres were ap- 
propriated to Orange when that town was incorporated. In 
1799, 300 or 400 acres were added from Athol and Gerry 
(now Phillipston). In 1803 several hundred acres were added 
from Athol. In 1837 not far from 200 acres were taken out 
of Phillipston and annexed to your jurisdiction. 

The title and charter muniments, therefore, now assign to 
this municipality not far from 26,000 acres. It has the disad- 
vantage of remoteness from the sea and of a northern frontier 
contiguity, which is considerable ; but it enjoys the compen- 
sations of a soil submissive to cultivation, rigorous to the 
sight, but yielding generously to the stroke of the earnest 
arm, — of benignant drifts and ranges, of the affluent waterfalls 



COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS AT ROYALSTON, MASS. 115 

of Miller's and Priest's rivers, and of the simpler Lawrence 
and Tully, which give richness because they give plenty, — of 
rural beauty, worthy of historic record, at the royal falls of 
Forbes and of Doane, — of the sparkling mineral gems which 
the official geologist of Massachusetts once told me he had 
gladly set in his family seal, — of an atmosphere that inspires 
youth and enlivens age, — of territorial possessions, simple 
indeed, but glistening with the authority of the names of tlie 
fathers of American Independence, — of a planting in the 
mountain air, — of a history studded with patriotic associa- 
tions, — of a religious connection that shall bear your children 
to the heights of a happy remembrance of the names of their 
fathers, — of a place on the sweet, broad plain of this civili- 
zation of "Worcester North, stars encircling overhead, and a 
simple robustness of character sustaining the people. 

And so you will adhere to the territorial vestments dropped 
upon you and around you by your ancestors, clinging to your 
acres and yielding them not to other calls. Your town is 
symmetrical and compact, — large enough and small enough, 
— and bears a just proportion to the prescriptive idea of 
a Massachusetts township of six ndles square. I would 
not diminish it nor enlarge it. Let other municipalities 
nibble around your borders, but let them nibble in vain, and 
you will hold fast to that which is good and which is none 
too much. 

And now, if we revert to the proceedings of these purchasers 
of our soil, we discover from their journals that tliey held 
proprietors' meetings from 1753, over a period of thirty-four 
years, until 1787, when their records were closed and sealed. 
To James Otis, Isaac Eoyal, and their original associates, 
John Hancock was added as an owner in 1765. No town 
can assert a better beginning or a more reputable heritage of 
name and blood. The proprietors held their meetings in 
Boston, "at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern." At the first 
meeting it was "motioned that the land aforesaid be called 
Eoyal-shire, and they unanimously agreed thereto, whereupon 



116 ADDKESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK, 

the Hon. Isaac Eoyal generously gave his word to give the 
partners £25 sterling towards building a meeting-house for 
said town." Here we first find our name. 

Tiie Hon. Isaac Eoyal was a citizen of Medford, a gentle- 
man of great spirit for public enterprise, devoted in admiration 
for his king, and generous and munificent for his time. He 
was a member of the General Court and of the Council for 
twenty-two years. The pulpit Bible which was used in this 
First Congregational Society for seventy-five years was a gift 
from him. He also gave 2,000 acres, a large part of which 
was in this town, to found the professorship of law in Harvard 
University, which still bears his name. He promised to give 
a full lot of land in this township to the first male child that 
should be born here ; but, several girls taking the precedence 
of birth, Eoyal Chase, named after him, came too late on the 
stage, and died too early to make the proffer availing. For 
in the mean time the elements of the Eevolution gathered 
and broke, and our benefactor and friend, Isaac Eoyal, who 
could not give up his king, passed over to the Tories, sailed 
for England in 1776, and never returned. It is related in the 
history of the refugees that after his departure even his beau- 
tiful estate at Medford refused cultivation, that the scythe 
refused to cut Tory grass, and the oxen to plough Tory soil. 
The tone of his letters from England, in 1779, written before 
independence was by any means assured, indicated his yearn- 
ing desire to return to Massachusetts, and to make his last 
bed by the side of his relatives and friends. But the desire 
came too late; for, by the sweeping act of October 16, 1778, 
passed by the House of Eepresentatives and approved in 
Council, he whose name we bear received the indelible char- 
acter of an exile and an outlaw. But let not that which was 
a political necessity of the time perpetuate his reproach ; and 
this, I perceive, was the judgment of our fathers. No town 
was more patriotic than this in the Eevolution ; but I rejoice 
that its citizens appear never for one moment to liave thought 
of giving up their corporate name because their benefactor 



COMMEMORATIVE ADDEESS AT ROYALSTON, MASS. 117 

had estranged himself from their political opinions. The 
name of this town and the title of the Cambridge law profes- 
sorship may honorably be retained in his remembrance. 

The first possession of this soil by our ancestors dates from 
1752, but the French war of 1756 — the most dramatic and 
engrossing contest on this continent prior to that of the Eevo- 
lution — threw all the arts and labors of peaceful enterprise 
into suspense and abeyance for several years. You will ap- 
preciate how and why the clearing and culture of the glebe 
was suspended here to make way for the practice of the bayo- 
net, if you recall tliat the whole population of the province 
was drawn into the vortex of that war. Not in the Eevolu- 
tion, not in the late Eebellion, of which the pressure is still 
heavy on your hearts, were the young men, who settle the 
land, so disproportionately called into the field of arms. In 
that conflict of seven years we are informed that Massachusetts 
alone sent to the field thirty-five thousand of her sons, and 
seven thousand for each of three successive years. Every 
nook and corner of this province was exhausted by the uni- 
versal call. 

As the war approached its end the permanent settlement 
of these lands began. In sympathy with the policy of the 
fathers of New England, the proprietors of Eoyal-shire laid 
our foundations in moral and mental education. At their 
first meeting in 1753 they had directed the land to be laid 
off into sixty lots for settlers, and three others for a minister, 
for the support of worship, and for a school. Their com- 
mittee came here and personally superintended this work, 
and selected the wild spot so familiar to us on the Lawrence 
stream for the mills. The church and the school, the saw-mill 
and the grist-mill, were the early handmaids of our civiliza- 
tion. They are so to this day in the West, beyond the Mis- 
sissippi, where our example is repeated. 

In 1761, the war having spent its fury, deeds had been 
granted to twenty-one settlers. In the next year these ten 
acres near w^hich you have pitched your pavilion were sol- 



118 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

emnly consecrated for the meeting-house, the training-field, 
and the burial-ground, the last of which was subsequently by 
exchange removed a little farther to the south, out of what is 
now this comely village ; and a contract was made for the 
mills. 

In the following year, 1763, a meeting-house was con- 
tracted for at £200, which was completed in 1764. Still 
another year witnessed the prompt execution of the wise 
policy of the founders, in setting apart 231 acres for the 
first minister, 424 acres for the ministry, and 420 acres 
for the school. To procure sixty settlers the proprietors 
offered to each man 100 acres, with the condition of set- 
tling a clergyman, clearing six acres, and building every 
one a house. No higher wisdom than this ever initiated 
a town or a State. And then the remaining lots were 
divided among the proprietors by drawing; and that was 
the profit which they deserved. 

In this year, 1765, February 16, the act of incorporation 
of the town, under the name of Royalston, was approved in 
Council. No copy of the act appears among your files. Ac- 
cordingly, I have availed myself of the kindness of the pres- 
ent obliging Secretary of State, the Hon. Oliver Warner, and 
have procured a literal transcript of the charter, handsomely 
engrossed upon parchment and bearing his attestation, which 
the town clerk will please faithfully preserve. It is the titu- 
lar charter of the last and youngest of all the towns of this 
ancient and noble county in the days of the province and of 
the royal arms. 

It is worthy of preservation, for under it your fathers have 
kept the public name untarnished, and you will see to it that 
no blemish shall alight upon the life of the present gen- 
eration. 

The active settlement of this town began in 1762, when 
six families moved in, some of whose blood still circulates 
among your residents. I think we may estimate highly the 
soundness of the stock of these sturdy pioneers, since it ap- 



COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS AT ROYALSTON, MASS. 119 

pears that the average age of these six heads at their death 
was not less than seventy-six years. So rapid was the influx 
of new-comers, that very soon after the French war had 
closed as many as seventy-five heads of families had become 
establislied here, many of whose names help to fill your vot- 
ing-list in the present day. Time will not allow me to make 
use of the long list which is in my hands as I should like. 
Theirs was a wilderness life under a degree of hardship, of 
toil and deprivation, which only strong arms and hearts val- 
iant in Christian faith could have sustained. 

No imagination of this day, no preserved traditions of the 
past, can do justice to those early labors. Many of these men 
who came hither from Sutton, as was illustrated in the in- 
stance of Captain Sibley, would clear a piece of woodland 
here, go back to look after haymaking in Sutton, and return 
in time to sow a rye-field in Eoyalston. Prior to the erection 
of the first mill by Isaac Gale, bags of grain were carried on 
the shoulders of men to a neighboring town to be ground and 
brought back in the same manner. No wonder that they, 
who thus opened the pathway in this town with humble 
means and patient labor, were the same that confronted 
boldly James Otis and John Hancock, a committee of the 
proprietors, and insisted before the Legislature upon the 
justice and equity of taxing the lands of non-residents for 
the support of the Gospel ; and no wonder that they suc- 
ceeded against even those overshadowing names. I desire 
not to appear invidious in selecting out of so many who were 
prominent in their day. 

The three selectmen chosen at the first town-meeting, 
May 7, 1765, — John Fry, Timothy Eichardson, and Benjamin 
Woodbury, — bore names which have descended in other rep- 
resentatives of their blood through the records of a century, 
and which still live in honor and respect among you. The 
limitations of my address will only permit an allusion to the 
first of these. 

John Fry, a lineal descendant in the fifth generation of 



120 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

one wlio came from England and settled in this country, 
moved from Sutton to Royalston and resided on yonder emi- 
nence. He was called here the Esquire, but he brought with 
him a distinction of arms. I have had placed at my use by 
one of his kinsmen the original commission under the king 
which he received as First Lieutenant from Governor Shirley 
in 1745, and under which he fought before Louisburg and 
entered the fort to the music of the same drums which thirty 
years later beat still better sounds at Bunker Hill. Ten years 
afterwards he bore royal commission as Captain for service 
at Crown Point. He was past the time for military activity 
when the Eevolution opened, and was obliged to suppress 
his soldierly instincts in the home life of a good deacon and 
model citizen. He lived here nearly fifty years, and died at 
ninety-six. 

As I look over the memoranda concerning those men of 
the last century which have been gathered from traditions and 
placed in my hands, my admiration is excited for tlieir en- 
durance and their whole character. It was the best of stock 
with which to build up a town. I have also been impressed 
by the uniform fact of their remarkable longevity, which 
attests the purity and contentment of their lives. For small 
gains, but many large and Adrtuous rewards, they struggled 
manfully in the infancy of American civilization ; they 
drove out wild beasts and subdued the wilderness ; they 
opened the paths to a better condition for those who came 
after them, to more comfortable homes and a larger affluence ; 
worn out at last they lay down to their rest in the track 
their own hands had made, and they left to the present gen- 
eration a heritage of works in which all ages may discern 
the beauty and the strength of religion, subordination, and 
patriotism. 

Aided by the munificence of Colonel Eoyal the proprietors 
erected the first meeting-house in 1764 near the centre of 
this public ground. It was left in a rude state of unfinished 
interior and without pews. Upon one side of the broad aisle 



COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS AT ROYALSTON, MASS. 121 

were seated the males and upon the other the females, as 
•was then usual in country houses of worship, which custom 
appears to have continued during a period of nearly forty 
years. There being no distinctive seats assigned to the sing- 
ers, the tuning-fork and deaconing off by lines came to the 
rescue of church harmony. Thirty-three years after, in 1797, 
the old house was removed, and another more commodious 
took its place. This remained with some alterations till it 
was destroyed by fire in 1851, when the present appropriate ed- 
ifice was reared. These changes have been very marked, and 
the contrast is striking. I can conceive that if John Fry, Tim- 
othy Eichardson, and Benjamin Woodbury were to come back 
in the flesh and be ushered, along the present aisles and by 
darkened windows, to carpeted slips and cushioned seats, and 
this new organ of yours were to practise ujDon their ears the 
imitation of a few of its flutes and its fiddles, and should wind 
up with a swell or two of the grand diapason, they would call 
upon their leader of 1765 to draw the sword which he flashed 
at Crown Point, and to drive out of the house a congregation 
of worshippers who could tolerate such innovations. But we 
must remember that each age has its standard, and that in 
nothing else do men become so sacredly attached to their 
custom as in matters relating to Christian worship. 

I have spoken of the first condition imposed by the pro- 
prietors upon the landholders, — that they should support a 
minister. During the first three years of incorporation the 
temporary services of several clergymen were secured, but it 
is not important to recite their names. At length, in April, 
1768, the town extended a call to the Eev. Joseph Lee to 
settle. You will bear in mind that this was then what has 
been since termed by the courts a poll-parish, the town and 
the religious society blending under the law. He was offered 
for settlement £400 "old tenor," in addition to the 231 acres 
granted by the proprietors for the first settled minister, and 
in lawful money a salary of £46 13s. 4:d. per annum for the 
first three years ; £53 Qs. 8d. per annum for the next three 



122 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

years ; and £G0 each year thereafter, and thirty cords of wood 
to be drawn annually from his own land to his door. 

The church of sixteen jDersons had been formally organized 
two years before. The call was accepted, and the pastoral 
office was filled by ordination, October 19, 17G8. His life, 
his services, his eulogy, are in the dim letters upon that 
familiar tablet-stone in the neglected graveyard, which time 
will soon render illegible, unless you shall chisel them or 
color them anew. 

And now I cannot refrain from felicitating the inhabitants 
of Eoyalston over a fact which becomes at this point pertinent 
and impressive. As to all the central portion of the town, 
and by far the larger part of its whole population, after the 
expiration of one hundred years, you start on this second 
century with only the fourth clergyman and the fourth physi- 
cian since the origin. This is indeed a striking circumstance, 
and it has had much to do in forming and sustaining the 
character of the people. Everything stable, tried, ap})roved, 
and held fast, — nothing fitful, violent, or rushing, — has en- 
tered into the public policy or general life or private action 
of this municipality among the hills of the frontier. From 
father to son, without the intermittent fevers which have 
racked many other communities, familiarity with the same 
faces, with the same principles, with the same professional and 
dominating influences, has descended through the years of a 
century, and made the very name of Eoyalston a synonym for 
stability, tranquillity, and contentment. This is an inheritance 
to you worth your continued care to preserve. 

The patriotic history of the town is in proportion with all 
its other features. Those early settlements were made amid 
the rumblings of the approaching Revolution, and your first 
proprietors were among its chief actors. They divided, and 
Chandler and Eoyal went off to the loyalists. They were 
better known to our forefathers than were Otis and Hancock 
at that day, for Eoyal they cherished as their benefactor, and 



COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS AT ROYALSTON, MASS. 123 

Chandler had been active and fair in laying out their primeval 
lands. But they subordinated personal gratitude to public 
patriotism. 

I do not know that there was a single Tory among them 
all. Not even their poverty opened a door to the seductive 
blandishments of crowns and thrones. They had those among 
them who had borne the commission of their king, and who 
had fought for his diadem on the line of the ocean and the 
lake ; but they cast all these pleasant memories behind them, 
waited not to know which side should win, and threw them- 
selves, their town, their all, into the breach with the struggling 
colonists for independence. 

Through the town records of the Eevolutionary period I 
find, loosely scattered and poorly preserved, sufficient proof 
of the exalted patriotism of those good men. It cannot be 
necessary that their votes and acts should be here set forth in 
detail. 

During all this time the first settlers were continually going 
themselves into the service, — the last two men marching off 
in 1782. There was no call from Philadelphia to which they 
did not respond, nor a drum-beat heard from Bunker Hill or 
Saratoga or Bennington with which their hearts did not keep 
music. When Burgoyne in the North spread abroad such 
terror, the men of this town and of all Northern Worcester 
rose to arms and marched forth for the encounter. All this 
occurred when more than half these acres were covered with 
the original forests, when the settlements were in their in- 
fancy, when the currency was perplexing all the relations of 
life, and when Royalston had only between six hundred and 
seven hundred inhabitants. Other and older and richer 
towns did more, but I humbly submit that none did better 
than this. 

It is a source of increasing regret that the records of the 
town in its primitive period have only partially preserved the 
names of the Eevolutionary soldiers. From the books, im- 



124 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

perfectly kept as they were, I derive the names of Xahum 
Green, Samuel Barton, Esquire Davis, John Whittemore, 
Nathaniel Jacobs, Timothy Armstrong, Michael French, Eoger 
Chase, Moses Walker, Joel Stockwell, Eliphalet Eichardson, 
B. Woodbury, Eleazer Burbank, Bezaleel Barton, Isaac Nichols, 
and Silas Cutting. Others there were, many and as good, but 
their names have not been saved. The last named of these 
was one of the first six settlers of the town in 1762, and died 
in the military service of the war. But the remainder of 
them had come here a little later than 1762, in the shoal or 
drift of settlers who floated in this direction so rapidly from 
the southern towns. One of them, Nahum Green, was the 
delegate to the second Provincial Congress of Massachusetts 
in February, 1775. He appears to have gone from that 
Congress into the first army gathered for independence at 
Charlestown, and was probably engaged in the battle of 
Bunker Hill ; he returned here in July and died of the small- 
pox, which he had contracted while in the service. This first 
martyr which Eoyalston contributed to the Eevolution was 
privately buried near his own home, about a mile southerly 
of this spot, and the soldier's resting-place can now barely be 
identified by the remaining cobbles that make his lieadstone. 
Cannot this town afford, by some simple, appropriate, and 
enduring memorial, to rescue from oblivion the gory bed of 
the aboriginal patriot whose name yet survives without a 
tablet the scene of the first mortal sacrifice offered in her be- 
half to the immortality of the American Union ? Pardon me 
for asking you to think of this, and to act either by private 
subscription or in open town-meeting. Another of them, 
Nathaniel Jacobs, as it appears, unintentionally, in the quaint 
language of the papers in your chest, " did a tower of duty in 
Ehode Island." All of these, and many others whose names 
are lost to our sight, struggled throughout the conflict, and 
some died in the battles, that they might write the honor of 
their young municipality upon the shining bosses of the Ee- 
public of the world in the West. And I am proud to be able 



COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS AT ROYALSTON, MASS. 125 

to stand before you and to say that of all who enlisted into 
that service from this town, not one — not one was ever 
recorded as a deserter. We meet to-day upon their ancient 
training-ground to render ascriptive gratitude for the honor 
of their robust virtues, for the example of their marvellous 
sacrifices, for the fame of their glorious death. Let us in our 
day cherish the memories of our ancestors in that war, and 
transmit every syllable of their names encircled with reverence 
to the last posterity. 

Our patriotic journal is as continuous as it is creditable. In 
the war with Great Britain in 1812-15, our fathers were alike 
Federal in politics and steadfast in their patriotism. They 
believed througliout in the policy of Hamilton and Ames and 
Strong, but they never stood away from the national colors. 
Accordingly they sent a fine, large company of grenadiers for 
coast defence to Boston under circumstances of departure 
which made the scene to be remembered as pathetic and 
impressive. Those men all returned without a casualty, and 
nearly one half of their number live to-day to celebrate tlieir 
Federal and bloodless campaign. Other citizens of tlie town, 
however, went out into the active service and mingled in the 
enfragements of that war on distant fields. 

In the late war of the Eebellion the conduct of this 
town has been such as I am proud to record. Her people 
stood early and constant by the Government, and by the prin- 
ciple of universal liberty. In the defence of them they have 
strained every energy under circumstances of embarrassment 
not shared by many other sections of the State. The opening 
conflict found the place considerably exhausted of its young 
men, whom more exciting fields of enterprise had drawn 
away from their hillsides, and the second year of the strug- 
gle greatly increased that exhaustion. But still upward and 
onward to the last victories our people answered to the calls 
of the country, filled their quotas, and never fell below the 
example of their Eevolutionary sires. Several of the native- 



126 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

born sons of Eoyalston have been promoted as general officers 
to high commands in the national army. When I consider 
that the population lias been declining within the last decade, 
and that this decline represents chiefly the departure of those 
who are within the age of military requisition, I confess my 
surprise and admiration over the role of those who have borne 
the name of our birthplace on the many fields of this war. 
The great cost to the manhood of the Union in defence of its 
life becomes solemn to our senses when we examine in detail 
the account of the several towns of Massachusetts. From 
this little community alone one hundred and ten men have 
enlisted in the sublime work of saving their country by arms. 
Of this enlistment an uncommon proportion have fallen to 
their last sleep. They fell in the deadly night-shades of 
Carolina ; in the early battles which cheered every loyal heart 
by the tidings wafted from Eoanoke and Newbern ; in the 
conflict with an armed foe and with a more fatal climate on 
the Lower Mississippi ; in the terrible and unavailing slaughter 
at Drury's Bluff and Cold Harbor; on guard and in the 
trenches and along the blazing lines, whenever and wherever 
they were called ; in Libby, which is yet unavenged ; in the 
stockade of Andersonville, from which the voices of thirty 
thousand Union boys, starved, tortured, murdered, now break 
the silence of death in a chorus cry for justice. The soldiers 
of Ptoyalston have lifted their souls to the contemplation of 
duty and to the heights of courage, have offered up their lives 
to the sudden death of the field and the slow death of the 
prison, and have perpetuated the name of the town which 
enrolled them in annals of immortal lustre. So long as we 
and our children shall enjoy the blessings of Union which 
they died to save, and shall bless the God of our ancestors 
for sealing with their sacrifices the freedom of all races in 
America, their names shall be cherished by us, and shall de- 
scend to everlasting remembrance. Let those names, every 
one of them, be attached to this commemorative address, and 
be engrossed in your ofiicial records for endurance till these 



COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS AT ROYALSTON, MASS. 127 

hills shall melt away. Ye gallant survivors, welcome to-day ! 
Ye gallant dead, hail and farewell ! 

From this I might easily diverge to speak of the prominent 
men whom I learned so greatly to respect as sources of radiat- 
ing influence from this central common. The minister, Mr. 
Perkins, of grave yet pleasant memory, — how I rememher 
him, in his long floating summer toga, driving us in at the 
eight o'clock bell on every Saturday evening ; Esquire Joseph 
Estabrook, our first postmaster, our first gentleman, our first 
Senator, to my perceptions blending the old and the new 
school of manners, who began as a trader, and adopted in 
later years the pleasant vocation of a grazier, having a genius 
for noble cattle as quick and intuitive as Daniel ^Vebster ever 
possessed, whose blood, whether remaining here or transferred 
in honorable connections to other places, honors the parent 
stock ; Dr. Batcheller, absolutely august in his proportions, 
always riding rapidly and smoking as fast, with a short genial 
nod and a happy word for everybody and especially for the 
young of both sexes ; Major-General Franklin Gregory, who 
succeeded to Estabrook on the other side of the street, gentle- 
man by nature, taking by instinct to the military, in which 
he excelled all others and in that capacity presided at one of 
the festive boards in reception of Lafayette, the most enter- 
prising merchant this town ever had, and inaugurating here 
her largest trade, whose untimely death in 1836 at forty-four 
was a public loss irreparable ; and one other, who far out- 
lived all these his associates, whom as exemplar of a long, 
simple, successful, and virtuous life, whom as many times 
your Eepresentative, twice your Senator, your delegate to the 
Constitutional Conventions of 1820 and 1852, your honored 
townsman in his lifetime, and benefactor in death, I should 
proudly describe, but that the inheritance of his name for- 
bids, — these, and others, challenge my memories in this 
hour and hallow the spot of a youthful love. They have all 
gone, and with most of their day and generation they repose 



128 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

in these burial-grounds and almost in our presence. And so 
on this occasion the past comes back to me in the memorials 
which are treasured but fractured, leaving to me this morning 
the melancholy pleasure of uniting my heart with the friends 
that survive. 

The industrial characteristics of the town have changed 
with the exigencies of the age. The water-falls have been re- 
claimed, and the ever-varying arts and industries inaugurated 
by the use of steam as a practical agency and by the division 
of labor have come in here as elsewhere, and have somewhat 
transformed that which was formerly a rural life. There was 
very early in its history a quite respectable use of woollen 
machinery, which under the new dispensation of industry has 
been greatly increased, until no small part of the local market 
for consumption and values is now found in the wheels and 
cogs and spindles which make South Eoyalston the central 
point of active enterprise and production. While that busy 
hive on your southerly border, having the double advantage 
of the river and railroad, must henceforth maintain its suprem- 
acy, let us indulge the hope that only fraternal relations shall 
subsist between the sections, and that all together will con- 
tinue for generations to be contented and united under the 
patriarchal banner. 

To the agricultural identities of the population I mainly 
ascribe its almost stationary numerical peculiarity. From 
1790 to 1860, a term of seventy years, the number of in- 
habitants only varied from 1,130 to 1,486, from one decade to 
another, sometimes gaining a little and sometimes losing 
nearly the same. 

Your annals are not of the prizes of fortune and affluence, 
nor contain they any modern chapter of poverty. Those 
annals tell us of systematic toil, and patriotic struggle, and 
l^atient endurance, and the Christian faith. The economies 
of industry and the riches of the heart are the pride and 
solace of the record. This town should never be for^rotten 



COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS AT ROYALSTON, MASS. 129 

by her sons wheresoever they may wander. For myself, as 
here the first breath was drawn, so liere the last word should 
willingly be uttered. If the sons and daughters could abandon 
and forget her in pursuit of more exciting scenes, even in 
larger numbers than they have yet gone, — if the country 
simplicity of the early days should settle down like the 
clouds of the province over lier fields and her farms, — my last 
remembrance should still revert to the happy hills and pas- 
tures of childhood, and I would still address her in the lan- 
guage of mingled encouragement and admonition, worthy of 
the poet of the " Deserted Village," — 

" Aid slightest truth with thy persuasive strain ; 
Teach erring man to spare tlie rage of gain : 
Teach liim, that towns of native strength possest, 
Though very poor, may still be very blest, 
That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay. 
As ocean sweeps the labored mole away, 
"While self-dependent power can time defy, 
As rocks resist the billows of the sky." 

Friends and fellow-citizens, this imperfect tribute to the 
qualities and the labors of our ancestors must be brought to 
a close. At the end of one hundred years, we, their descen- 
dants, have assembled to contemplate in brief review their 
lives and achievements. I submit it to impartial judgment, 
that their conduct in the early settlement, in the manage- 
ment of the town, in the cultivation of the fields, in their 
relations with the great events of the country in all the 
duties of Church and State, in the salutary examples which 
have passed from one generation to another, — in religion, 
industry, politics, and daily life, — has been such that we 
may rehearse it with pride and commend it to those who 
shall come after us. This congregation of the living is equalled 
in numbers by those who sleep in this town in the quiet en- 
closures of the dead. They speak to us out of tlieir silence 
and repeat the lesson of their lives. As they were bound 
together by the ties of friendship in the primitive period of 
their trials, and have kept the councils of peace and unity 

9 



130 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

through all the stages of this history, so let that spirit con- 
trol another age, and the felicities of social life go hand in 
hand with public stability and prosperity. As they adapted 
themselves to the changing requisitions of the general indus- 
try and economy, so let the tides of occupation, as they come 
and go "with you, bear onward a community never behind but 
always advancing. As they never failed to uphold the honor 
of their country by their hearts, by their declarations, and 
by their arms, so let the American Union and the Common- 
wealth of Massachusetts find in this town forever most con- 
stant friends and most gallant defenders: As they have 
transmitted to our keeping the institutions of worship and 
education, by them at all times well endowed and well sup- 
ported, so let the endowments be multiplied and the support 
be enlarged till the bells of the churches and the schools shall 
sound a welcome in every ear. And when, after the passage 
of another century, your successors shall meet over your dust 
to celebrate their day, may it be the happiness of the inter- 
vening generations to have provided for them as little for 
reproach and as much for devout thanksgiving as we our- 
selves have received from our fathers. 



ADDRESS 

delivered before the massachusetts charitable mechanic associa- 
tion at tremont temple, boston, oct. 4, 1865. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen: 

I CONGRATULATE the members of the Massachusetts Char- 
itable Meclianic Association tliat with the return of peace 
the opportunity for resuming their periodical exhibition is 
restored under circumstances so gratifying. While the war 
lasted your seasons of ovation to the useful arts were indeed 
suspended amid the pathos and pageantry of arms ; but the 
arts themselves suffered little abatement ; rather they took 
from the excitations of the time new intensity to themselves, 
and repeated the lesson taught by other countries, that war 
periods are quite apt to quicken and invigorate the national 
genius. Accordingly, while the late conflict was raging, and 
all classes, all interests, all welfares, were to some extent 
swept into the vortex, the records of the Patent Office prove 
that the inventive wits of the country kept steadily at their 
work under the highest tension, and the income list de- 
monstrates, what we all knew before from our personal 
observation, that the mechanic arts and manufactures were 
reaping a golden harvest. Nay, even more than this, and 
pertaining to the rationale of our military success, these 
creative and constructive forces had not only prepared the 
free States for the war when it came, but they became them- 
selves the nerves and sinews of the Treasury which shares 
with the soldier the honors of victory. The glistening col- 
lection of ordnance which is packed in yonder hall — let 



132 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

US hope not soon to be needed in the field — derives its 
highest interest and largest instruction from the bright array 
of its peaceful companionship, the engines, the fabrics, the 
textiles, which almost seem conscious of their sovereignty 
amid martial implements and martial deeds. 

But now it is that the war having subsided the arts as- 
sume once more their control in the state, and sway all the 
classes and all the employments of men. We are soon to be 
in statu quo ante helium, — a generation pushing the origi- 
nalities of motive power and the artificial combinations of 
forces to the farthest verge of empire. This is an age and 
ours a country of mechanism. The mechanical arts, with 
which for all purposes of discussion manufactures are sy- 
nonymous, bear the rule in our time. The prizes of fortune, 
which formerly fell almost exclusively to commerce, now 
alight more frequently here ; and without these agencies 
agriculture would never have awaked from the sleep of the 
earlier periods. The institutions of education, without aban- 
doning the classic fields, recognize and apply this fact ; and 
Boston, as much a city of mechanics as of merchants, 
through her Lawrences, father and son, and more recently 
her Hooper, has conferred upon the neighboring University 
new and practical departments of contemporary power and 
lasting beneficence. And so I take up the condition as we 
find it, and for these remaining moments will consider the 
relations of the Mechanic Arts ivith Liberty and Social Pro- 
gress. 

No lesson of modern history has been more clearly defined 
than that the growtli of these utilities has been the herald of 
a larger freedom than was before enjoyed. It is difficult 
indeed — so imperfect have been historical writers in their 
delineation of domestic custom — to point out the exact con- 
nection which one improvement after another has borne with 
the general results ; but we cannot recur to the record of 
those days in which manufactures, and commerce, which 
would be of little consequence without them, first caught the 



BEFORE THE CHARITABLE MECHANIC ASSOCIATION. 133 

influence of the pulsations which startled the people of 
Europe from their torpor, without becoming ourselves admir- 
ing witnesses of their quickening and regenerating effect 
upon the tyranny of a thousand preceding years. If we go 
back to wliat under our classification of periods is called the 
Middle Ages, we find that the institution of feudalism, half 
patriarchal and half military, held everything in subjection 
until artisanship, manufactures, and trade loosed forever the 
chain and the grasp. The triumph at Eunnymede, to which 
we are in the habit of referring the landmarks of freedom, 
was chiefly the success of feudal lords over a feudal crown ; 
it brouf:i;ht but little of practical liberty to the nine tenths of 
all, who still continued under a baronial despotism. It was 
not till the mechanic arts, few and small as they were, — 
manufactures dawning faintly and at intervals in a long dark 
period, dying out in one place only to take new life in an- 
other, — and commerce, depending upon these for its support, 
always sharing their fortunes and keeping place only with 
their progress, — had varied the broad dead level of the pub- 
lic condition, had liberalized the ranks above and C[uickened 
the masses below, had opened the way for the fusion of the 
social classes, and penetrated their mutual relations with 
those aspirations which have beat higher and higher till now 
they control the Western nations, that anything which can 
be called popular freedom had a genuine and transmitted 
existence. In the descent and diffusion of liberal ideas, in 
the promulgation of connnon rights, in the establishment of 
systems of justice and equity, towns and cities have proved 
to be the most effective agencies ; but these have sprung up 
only in sympathy with manufactures and commerce. The 
mediaeval landed proprietor conferred no such benefits upon 
the race ; he held his artisans under the limitations of a quasi- 
white servitude, and for all the purposes of reforming social 
abuses and redeeming men from vassalage their relation was 
almost of as little value as that of the mechanics of Greece 
and Eome, who were slaves. If the annals of mankind 



134 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

chronicle anything with a point and a moral to it, it is that 
for centuries there were no considerable and enduring manu- 
factures whicli were popular in their origin, popular in their 
uses, and popular in their relations. I allow that among the 
memorials of early time, partly rescued and partly entombed 
beyond our knowledge, there are sublime traces of lost arts. 
Wonderful to this generation, marvels to the modern science 
of mechanics, they loom out from Nineveh and Babylon and 
Jerusalem, and Egyptian pyramids, and later cities even now 
under the process of exhumation, full of interesting disclo- 
sure to the antiquary and the scholar, but bringing little 
instruction as to the advancement and enfranchisement of 
the world, and scarcely coming at all within the circuit of the 
golden links which in our day bind the productions of genius 
and art to the welfare of humankind. They are splendid 
encomiums upon the skill of the past ; but they furnish not 
much aid to the progressive lessons of our political economy, 
which builds up Boston and Lowell and Lawrence and 
Worcester, and infuses them with the springs of immortal 
life. Such a benign mission was reserved to a later period of 
popular arts. Those were feudal times, having an abundance 
of rural life, protected by the castle, the turret, and the port- 
cullis. 

In classifying the periods and the causes of the deliver- 
ance of Europe, a philosophical historian (Mr. Hallam) has 
ascribed one of the first degrees of progress to the introduction 
of woollen manufactures into Flanders, nearly si.K hundred 
years ago. So magical was the effect that the wings of trade 
opened wide and far, that little district became a market of 
renown, and merchants from seventeen kingdoms besides 
strangers from almost unknown countries were domiciled in 
the inconsiderable capital of West Flanders, that palpitated 
under the new dispensation of industry. How infectious are 
these examples ! They spread immediately through the free 
cities of Germany, and wherever the most mechanical skill 
and production was developed, there the greatest civil liberty 



BEFORE THE CHARITABLE MECHANIC ASSOCIATION. 135 

was enjoyed. England invoked the charm ; and as if real- 
izing the glory of the title which subsequent liistory has 
given to him, of the " father of Endish commerce," — "a 
title by which he may claim more of the gratitude of his 
countrymen than as the hero of Crecy," — her great Edward 
opened a stream of emigration from the manufactures of the 
Continent which continued to pour, its life-giving influences 
into his realm for an hundred years afterwards. The com- 
merce of the Baltic sprang into existence, and Northern and 
Southern Europe greeted each other for the first time in 
peace and on shipboard ; ships of nearly a thousand tons 
astonished the god of the sea ; maritime law and the law sys- 
tem of nations took form and expression ; international comity 
and freedom rose to influence and respect ; banks started into 
life, the repositories of so many hopes, and bills of exchange 
were invented, those fictitious cords which bind together re- 
mote nations in faith and confidence ; the desolation of the 
wars of the Eoses was quickly repaired ; manufactures and 
trade obtained a place in the Statutes of Parliament, and from 
that day down they have swelled the volumes of its proceed- 
ings with the record of their fraternal progress, their equal be- 
neficence, their indissoluble glory. Those who were engaged in 
these occupations became respectable before the law, and be- 
gan to assume an equality with the landed pioprietor; for by 
a statute it was provided that an artisan or tradesman, — you 
will bear in mind that the two have travelled in company 
together on the same benevolent mission to the race and to 
its now conceded honors, — if possessed of real estate of the 
value -of £500, should be permitted to dress himself like a 
squire of £100. 

The struggle between arbitrary power and the rising classes 
was protracted in its duration and varied in its vicissitudes of 
success and defeat, but every generation brought it nearer to 
its termination. The hue of change was passing over the 
social condition, and the power of landholders was yielding to 
the free spirit of the towns. It was not in the tent, but in 



136 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

the workshop, that modern liberty was dreaming of her com- 
ing joys ; it was not in Gothic halls, but in the marts of trade, 
that equality of rights was panting with a new-born con- 
sciousness ; it was not in rural but in nrban life, in the smoke 
of cities, in the din of ports, that the reforms were maturing 
that should strike the century bells with the last note of the 
Middle Ages and awake mankind by the click and whirl and 
thunder of the arts to the amazing scenery which is now 
unfolding before us without exciting our surprise. There it 
was that new ideas of profit and of property, new conceptions 
of creative power and artistic combination, disturbed the stag- 
nation of all previous time ; and it was there in the con- 
sciousness of common strength, and invigorated by a more 
rapid circulation of thought, that the stubborn spirit of free- 
dom first made its roots broadly and profoundly. The king 
became disquieted at the rapid increase of London ; but arti- 
sanship, trade, and shipping found their way into Parliament. 
The democratical interest, distinguishing the orders of industry 
from the territorial aristocracy, was steadily diffusing itself 
and accumulating its power, running in even flood with ideas 
of equality and independence. Aided by the practical arts it 
gained the first modern triumph ; for while in an earlier day 
Wat Tyler could only summon a powerless rabble around his 
standard, who fell easily before the kniglits in their armor of 
steel, Cromwell afterwards gathered his heroic numbers from 
the houses of mechanics and merchants, Puritans in their 
religion and workmen in their lives, and a new era was opened 
at Marston Moor. 

The first conflict and the first victory of the arts you cele- 
brate this evening were waged and won in the land of our 
ancestors, whose history is strewn with choice memorials of 
the sources of our own freedom. The progress of Great 
Britain, since she emerged from the middle period, has been 
the gradual yet constant growth of a nation of mechanics. 
The constitution of England — her unwritten law, deeply em- 
bedded in the customs of her people — relates back for its 



BEFORE THE CHARITABLE MECHANIC ASSOCIATION. 137 

derivation through all the stages of her advancement in these 
utilities. The stern features of feudalism, which first gave to 
it an ascendency over the crown, have received in successive 
periods the softening influences of the arts, which have made 
her system of industry a nursery of liberal ideas. Their 
imperial life, their enfranchised individuality, from which we 
at first derived our own, have grown up from her wharves 
and warehouses and workshops until now they have become 
the first estate of the realm. That no tax should be extorted 
without the consenting voice of the legislature, has come from 
the early traders and mechanics whose defiance spoke in the 
cause of John Hampden ; every representative reform has 
been the achievement of the towns rising over the ruins of 
baronial towers ; that no man shall be imprisoned by the 
royal will is one of the flowers, not of regal dispensation, but 
of the new classification of labor ; religious freedom to the 
dissenter has gushed out from the wealth and influence of 
dissenters who run machinery and watch the hustings ; the 
independence of the judges is a fruit of the middle interest of 
the nation which can disrobe the ermine when it becomes 
impure ; the limitation of parliaments is the decree which is 
heard from the Manchesters, the Shefiields, and the Liver- 
pools ; the liberty of the press is the inspiring utterance that 
rises from a thousand fields, on her land and sea, in which a 
roar of water-falls mingles with a myriad of steam-engines in 
tones which all the kings of the earth cannot silence. In the 
whole round of her drum-beat her conquests have been the 
conquests of these arts. If it be true, as it has been said, that 
Arkwright, who placed cotton spinning in the weird sisterhood 
of national powers, bore the English nation triumphantly 
through the wars of the French Eevolution, it is equally true 
that neither Pitt nor Wellington, but Watt, who organized 
the steam-engine, was the conqueror of Napoleon. And 
within our own memory the final disinthralment from an 
overshadowing aristocracy was secured in a single day by the 
brilliant triumph of the " untaught, inarticulate genius " of 



138 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

George Stephenson, when he gave the first start under high 
pressure to the express train that made over the Liverpool 
and Manchester road the grand trial trip of the age of pro- 
gress ; the inventor and engineer being the plain Northum- 
berland mechanic, — the witnesses, Brougham and Wellinuton 
and Huskisson, ladies, court, and people, — and the freight, 
all the interests and all the hopes of civilization. Truthfully 
and philosophically did Dr. Arnold, of Eugby, exclaim, as he 
stood upon one of the bridges and watched the train Hashing 
through the fields belonging to lords who had done their 
utmost to thwart the experiment, " I rejoice to see it, and to 
think t\\Q.t feudality is gone forever." 

It would be pursuing a topic already too familiar to discuss 
at any length the relations of the mechanic arts with the 
development of public liberty in this country. They were, 
more distinctly than other interests, the causes and agencies 
of its independence. About the middle of the last century 
manufactures acquired an importance in Europe which dis- 
tanced all former example, and spread rapidly to this side of 
the water, where they found a population in the Northern 
colonies who for many years had been trying their hands at 
the same kind of work. Under the new impulse which now 
began everywhere to stimulate these pursuits, the people of 
Massachusetts and of other colonies eagerly caught at all 
suggestions which came from Europe, and quickly added to 
them their own originalities of invention. Then came the 
repressive and at times prohibitory policy of Great Britain, 
having all the power of Parliament to support it, aiming to 
destroy these hives of skilled labor while they were yet 
forming, and before they should be able to compete with 
those of the mother country. The purpose was the impover- 
ishment of the colonies in the departments of handicraft; 
and, as Mr. Burke said in his great speech on Conciliation, 
the English nation seemed to act upon the thought that 
America was becoming her rival in this class of production. 
Such legislation aroused a responsive spirit of resolution on 



BEFORE THE CHARITABLE MECHANIC ASSOCIATION. 139 

our side, and the men who were pursuing these labors, and 
were imparting to the life of New England a vigor and elas- 
ticity she had never before possessed, became restive under 
the restraint, resentful to tyranny, and ready for independence. 
So that, when the time came for rupturing the tie of empire, 
the question of taxation was rather the occasion than the 
primary cause of the war. The Revolution was a necessity 
out of years of accumulating measures of despotic vigor and 
repression, all directed to shattering the arm of art and skill 
in these Northern communities. The last blow which evoked 
the spark that burst into the blaze of conflict fell ostensibly 
indeed upon commerce ; but the thousands who had been 
struoglins at the infant manufactures of the time, whose 
manly hopes and sinewy arms had been kept down by legis- 
lative oppression, dictated from a throne three thousand miles 
away, now outnumbered the merchants and helped them to 
spread the flame. These were the men, the mecliauics and 
artisans of Boston and the seaboard, who made up the con- 
stituency that stood behind Samuel Adams as he walked 
these streets, watching and directing the rising storm. There 
was something in their experience under the British colonial 
system that urged them on to the contest ; there was some- 
thing more in their occupation, as creators in the system of 
political economy and in the domain of art, which elevated 
them to lofty conceptions of manhood and made them fit for 
earnest service in the struggle for liberty. 

Singularly and especially, after the Revolution, were your 
interests instrumental in organizing peace under a constitu- 
tional union of the States. The name of the early president 
of this association, Paul Eevere, worthily retained in our da}'^ 
in the relations of hospitality, of trade, and of manufactures, 
remembered in connection with all that he accomplished for 
the establishment of our National Government, at the first 
mention of it snatches from my lips everything I could say, 
if I ought to say even a word, upon a branch of my 
theme so interesting as this is. It has always appeared 



140 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

to me the wonder of our history, how, out of the chaos 
of the individualities of States, out of commercial diversi- 
ties and political antagonisms, out of the idiosyncrasies of 
climate and domestic institutions, out of conflicting remi- 
niscences of origin, settlement, and race, any union at all ever 
came to us. But the wisdom of the God of our fathers was 
higher than ours. Then rises before me the beauty, the mys- 
tery, the harmony, of the States and the classes which from 
so great diversity united in framing and confirming the Con- 
stitution. Our own New England was divided, so that if 
Massachusetts had an interest and a patriotism which over- 
came some of her theories and gave her among the earliest to 
the Union, Ehode Island had a revenue policy and perliaps 
some other reasons which kept her out until a little after the 
eleventh hour. In the conventions of New York and Massa- 
chusetts I suppose that question, so vastly interesting to the 
generations of America, to have been decisively settled for 
the whole confederation ; and in both of these States it is not 
too much to say now, in the light of tradition and history, 
that if it had been left exclusively to the landed interest, the 
Government under wliose flag your exhibition illustrates 
alilce the victories of arms and of arts could scarcely have 
been established. Here in Massachusetts the conmiunities 
in which manufactures allied to commerce had made most 
progress turned the trembling scales in favor of its adoption ; 
and I believe it is a fact now well understood tliat when emi- 
nent men, who led the councils of those days in this State, 
hesitated about the ratification, the manufacturers and me- 
chanics, animated by the fire and patriotism of Eevere, pressed 
them up to duty and enforced the decision of the convention. 
Quite similar were the circumstances wliich attended the 
result in New York, in whose convention the constitution 
received the vote of only tlie slightest majority of delegates. 
To the genius and efforts of Alexander Hamilton, which never 
shone more conspicuously than in the convention at Pough- 
keepsie, that conclusion will forever be attributed. He was 



BEFORE THE CHARITABLE MECHANIC ASSOCIATION. 141 

a delegate from the commercial metropolis, but his election 
may be traced to the meeting of the mechanics of that city 
who assembled at the house of William Ketchum and deter- 
mined that he should be elected. History, that selects her 
heroes, whether in peace or in war, from the number of those 
whose speech rules the forum or whose command propels 
squadrons on the field, and cannot pause to inquire who 
chose the orator or who fought under the order and the bu- 
gle, awards to Ames and his associates in ]\Iassachusetts, to 
Hamilton and his associates in New York, the honors of the 
adoption of the Constitution and of the ages of glory under it. 
Inquiry and analysis disclose to us the antecedent detail, — 
how the manufacturers and artisans of Boston and New York 
furnished to Ames the inspiration of his eloquence, and to 
Hamilton the opportunity for the amazing display of his in- 
tellect and his demonstration which carried the day for all 
coming time. The fame of your association culminates this 
evening in the bare mention of their renown. 

The limitations of this evening's exercise will not permit me 
to consider with any detail the influence of the mechanic arts 
upon social progress ; that would be a task for history and 
for volumes. It will surely be sufficient for the lighter pur- 
poses of the present occasion to treat the topic rather by illus- 
tration than l3y narrative or argument, especially since our 
own experience and observation supply all needed argument. 

An eminent English writer, Mr. Carlyle, who has not been 
at all satisfied with us in war, has criticised our condition as 
severely under peace, — claiming that we have lost our belief 
in the invisible, and that we live and hope and work only in 
the visible, the practical, and the mechanical. The theory 
is, that our best days are o^'er, that our spirit has become 
tame and enfeebled, and that under the prevalence of the 
material, the commercial, and the mechanical, our social tone 
and temper has lost its higher energy and sentiment. No 
argument can satisfy this theory, but historical illustrations 
scatter it to the imperceptible winds. This transcendental 



142 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

ideal of life, in its contrast with the later and experimental 
ages, is illustrated in the type of the earlier centuries which 
gave the trial to that doctrine and opened the way for the 
trial of ours. I invite you to the comparison. 

During the long period which closed when modern history 
began there was no lack of philosophy, but a vast want of 
mechanical utility. Great masters filled the world with syllo- 
gisms, but with no new tools for workmen. They were rich 
in brilliant conceits, fine abstractions, and keen dialectics ; 
but few new inventions, or practical improvements in morals 
or social existence, had a place in their barren fields. The 
conveniences and comforts of life were esteemed too vulgar 
for that philosophy. Alike in the night of the pagan schools 
and in the dim twilight of a corrupted Christianity, men dis- 
puted in never-ending cycles of abstract conceptions, of ideal 
good, of the essence of things ; and where one left off, an- 
other began and ended. The useful was undignified; and 
while true wisdom might well be found in reasoning after the 
organization of the soul, it could not come down to the idea 
of windows through which men might see and of pipes that 
should warm their freezing bodies. Angles of thought were 
polished to more than Damascan lustre, but angles of iron in 
its thousand styles for use would have been a scandal to the 
Grove and the Portico. Even the imperial intellect of Aris- 
totle might have been pleased by the suggestion of a swinging 
pendulum, as illustrative of the action of the human mind, 
but the intimation of its application to a Yankee timepiece 
would have ruffled his proud spirit. The idea of the electric 
fluid would have been accounted sublime as an abstraction, 
but the sight of Franklin flying a kite to evoke an eternal 
law from the skies to protect our houses and barns would 
have wrung a pang from many a Grecian philosopher. Those 
were great times and great men, but there were few benefac- 
tors in the larger sense pertaining to the whole of time. 
There was little of progress, for all tliat was taught died with 
the disputant, and there was nothing left to be transmitted 



BEFORE THE CHARITABLE MECHANIC ASSOCIATION", 143 

to the next age for adoption or improvement. Even down to 
the hearing of modern ears this subtle philosophy held its 
control ; alchemy, astrology, and the vain pursuit after the 
philosopher's stone, were in highest favor, while the arts and 
inventions that supply and elevate the race were in scholastic 
outlawry. During all this philosophical millennium, govern- 
ments were treated as ingenious agencies for conducting men 
to the ideal of virtue, and not as the splendid structures of 
experimental wisdom for enriching the people in all that art 
and wealth and morals can provide for the nmltiplying wants 
of social man. Unpractical schoolmen rose in proud suc- 
cession, and through their gigantic intellectual machinery 
furnished dogmas enough to the State and the Church for 
generations even now unborn ; but, viewed from the obser- 
vatory of a modern living age, they appear in some respects 
not unlike those massive windmills which formerly amused 
summer hours at Newport, whose ponderous arms revolved 
with fearful momentum even after the last kernel of fruit had 
departed from the hopper. 

But at length, in the fulness of time, our new producing 
powers acquired possession of the field. Their rapid devel- 
opment has been commonly ascribed to the change which 
Lord Bacon introduced to the studies and pursuits of men, 
under which physics, arts, utility, progress, have for centuries 
ruled over the circuit of human thought. Certain it is that 
within a century after his accession to the mastery, the 
toiling and patient philosophy of induction and experiment, 
of investigating step by step and process by process for the 
laws which guide mankind in their efforts to subdue matter 
and combine forces, was held in highest favor. Agriculture 
started from its slumberous bed as if touched by the wand of 
a charmer. The disputations of the schoolmen receded, and 
governments and morals and arts began to be judged by their 
effects. Alchemy and astrology fled with their lost dignity, 
and the study of natural elements and the arranging and ad- 
justing of natural forces took their places. Kings had their 



144 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

laboratories, judges studied water-courses, and fine ladies 
turned some of tlieir patronizing glances from the halls of 
courtiers to tlie hitherto vulgar labors which make tradesmen, 
artisans, and farmers. Architecture began to be contemplated 
in its bearings upon the common ranks of life ; houses to be 
ventilated ; lands to be drained ; machinery to be invented 
and set to work ; trade to become respectable ; and the pur- 
suits of man to receive that direction which has continued in 
an ascending scale until now our civilization is largely a record 
of these practical studies and these multiplied powers. 

Suppose now that Lord Bacon could come back in the flesh, 
accompanied, if you please, by some of those masters in nat- 
ural science and mechanical construction who have become 
familiar to us as public benefactors, and could tarry long 
enough to survey this vast convolution of results which 
sweeps the globe in its circle of blessing, — what a scene 
would meet their astonished gaze ! 

They would behold hundreds of millions of people engaged 
in occupations which in the old time had not been thought 
of, — such a panoramic view of enterprise and production 
and consumption as would have startled their own vivid im- 
agination in their lifetime. They would witness coal-fields 
and iron mines reclaimed from long neglect and become the 
very bases of modern civilization, without which nations can- 
not be opulent or independent, — the earth kindly opening 
its depths to receive myriads of men who by the light of 
science and the aid of arts bid defiance to its darkness and its 
gases, pump away its water and its refuse, and extract the 
ores and metals which are wrought to fit a thousand utilities 
and to become objects of inspiring beauty; agriculture re- 
stored to the honor of the time of the patriarchs, goaded by 
energies unknown before, enlivened by modern machinery 
and modern markets and in return conferring upon them its 
victorious sheaves. They would behold 

"Steam, that fleshless arm, 
Whose pulses leap with floods of living fire," 



BEFORE THE CHARITABLE MECHANIC ASSOCIATION. 145 

changing the features of the world, — commingling the flags of 
countries in the dance of the sea, — darting great ships in de- 
fiance of tlie winds and the breakers, and railroad cars where 
before no horse had penetrated, — operating more machines 
than the hour would permit me to enumerate if I knew 
them, — sending out from this city every morning before the 
cock crows thrice an hundred thousand printed sheets which 
cabinets read before they decide, and all New England before it 
approves, — facilitating intercourse, acquaintance, refinement, 
joy ; in Great Britain alone twenty thousand steam-engines 
driven day and night with a power equal to two millions of 
men; the artificial and mechanical forces of our land exceeding 
all the hands of the four continents of the globe a century ago, 
and two fifths of our male population over fifteen years of age 
employed in manufactures, the mechanic arts, commerce, and 
mining ; bays and rivers and gulfs spanned with a strength 
that shall never fail and with a beauty that shall survive the 
decay of the Parthenon ; the wilds of the country reclaimed, 
cities starting up as by enchantment, crowded with order 
and intelligence by day and lighted up by a flame that never 
goes out by night ; in our own empire thirty thousand miles 
of railroads making peace always ready for war and converting 
war into peace with a quickness and a quittal which other 
times never knew ; in this same America twenty-five thou- 
sand miles of wires, — I dare say there are more, — mute yet 
eloquent, talking up to the high noon of night of wants and 
supplies, of trades and battles, ever flashing with the messages 
of the living and the dead ; a commerce taking the products 
of the land and of the machines to the side of the sea and 
there committing them to another country, another world ; a 
system of credit and exchange founded in religious truth, 
sustained by honor and faith, blessing him who gives and 
him who receives ; a civilization they would behold and 
admire and pray for, which places it in the power of man to 
" wield these elements and arm him with the force of all 
their legions." 

10 



146 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

This photograph Lord Bacon and his associates would ac- 
cept as the picture of a portion, and only a portion, of the fruits 
of the tree of modern utility, which he assisted in planting, 
whose roots are intrenched in every well-ordered state to-day, 
whose pendent boughs canopy our time. These they would 
recognize as the trophies which are sometimes characterized 
as the material successes of commerce and the mechanic arts. 
Nor material successes only. For the survey would be in- 
complete which should not perceive the average duration of 
human life lengthened out, alleviations of suffering discovered, 
some diseases eradicated ; these steam-presses opening a flood 
of literature and scattering the Holy Scriptures like leaves 
for the healing of the nations; the English language per- 
vading the earth with exquisite thought and immortal char- 
ity; schools made free, universities accessible, and churches 
thrown open, where but recently solitude reigned supreme ; 
institutions of benevolence sending up to Heaven their thanks- 
giving and spreading their benefactions through society for the 
ills of the body and the mind ; history at her work clearing 
up the mysteries of time ; poetry sending its deep-toned 
vibrations through the heart of the age ; the fine arts awak- 
ening the soul in its daily toil to the eternities of love and 
beauty ; and the body of law and order breathing with a free 
spirit and laying a kind restraining hand upon the wayward- 
ness of our nature. Who is the man so unbelieving in the 
very presence of this world-wide exhibition which is passing 
before him, as to say that this mechanical period has not out- 
stripped every former period in the generality of its progress 
and in the loftiness of its ethics ? 

So also, gentlemen, the area of the hall of liberty and the 
market house which you have thrown open to the public for 
three weeks of holidays and for universal instruction, is 
crowded with proofs that your department of industry is 
alive with the higher taste and sentiment which becomes a 
part of aesthetic culture. There I behold inert substances 
transformed from their own mute creation into the properties 



BEFORE THE CHARITABLE MECHANIC ASSOCIATION. 147 

and activities of mechanical life, — that which was dead in 
nature made by skill and art to speak in a language felt and 
understood by the great circle of humanity, — the wood, the 
metal, and the ore so changed as to become a charm to the eye, 
music to the ear, and an awakening medium to all the sen- 
sations which are undying in the heart of man. I see the 
rude sands scooped from the natural beds of Berkshire fused 
with alkalies, and unified into forms which, if they were less 
common, would be valued as the rarer diamonds. I witness 
that model steam-engine under action, which was brought 
hither from our county of Worcester, out of a shop where I 
have seen three hundred loyal and lordly men pounding their 
intelligence into the work of their hands ; my eye ranges over 
the textures made up out of the fleece from the Western 
prairies, or the white ball from the Southern savannas, so 
fine that tliey recall the fact which has been recorded that 
a pound of cotton has been lengthened and attenuated into a 
thread of a thousand miles. These are the works, but whence 
has come the conception ? These are the arts, but who are 
the artists ? Is it according to the analogies of our knowledge 
that they who perform these things can be coarse and rude 
in their natures, unresponsive to taste and sentiment and 
humanity ? The modern artificer is the creator of beauty, 
and lives amid its forms and its suggestions. The soul of 
mechanism is animate with poetry. The ideals first exist in 
the mind of the mechanic, and are next transferred to wood 
and metal, and then are applied under the laws of time and 
space and fluids, and at length are invested with a perpetual 
life of motion that finds its type in the revolving spheres of 
the lieavenly world ; and tell me, can these things be so and 
not awaken all the capacities of his nature to the pleasures of 
culture and refinement and sensation ? The social life of our 
time is pervaded by the {esthetics of the mechanic arts. The 
eye, the sense, the soul, of the state finds a school larger and 
freer than municipalities ever founded, so long as men, women, 
and children throng their way to the splendid machine, gaze 



148 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

upon its unwonted style, its Gothic strength, its columnar 
supports, witness the balances of its action, the awful and 
mysterious silence with which it works, the ideal of propor- 
tion that makes it " the glass of fashion and the mould of 
form," and retire with plaudits for its architect and with 
blessings on his head. And if you follow out the thought, 
and apply it to the endless diversities of mechanism, and 
consider how extended the subdivision of this labor and art 
becomes, and how it individualizes the man and starts his 
nascent tastes, — and how it unfolds on another plane and in 
another grade, and produces a Powers, a Story, a Clevenger, a 
Ball, a Hosmer, — I cannot believe that you will hesitate to 
reckon this field of study as a part of the higlier culture that 
places upon this age a brighter coronet than any that was 
ever worn by medioeval kings. These arts impart to our 
country and to our generation the qualities of an epic age. 
The English traveller spoke the truth who returned home 
after his tour in America, and published his declaration that, 
far from being destitute of the poetic element, our country is 
itself one grand national poem. The spirit of tliat poem is 
beyond every Oriental example. It is not content to float 
lazily in sharp-nosed gondolas to the music of " flutes and 
soft recorders," but it asserts a loftier mission, — it breathes 
through all the arts at home, and utters itself from our 
" Flying Clouds " and " Howling Winds " and all other 
clipper ships of whatsoever name over the zones of the 
earth. 

And thus, approaching the manly arts which your association 
represents, and in my brief hour only by allusion touching, not 
tracing, their mysterious origin and their unrecorded growth, 
their effect in developing the resources of the earth, their 
relations to the liberty and the progress of man, and their 
connection with the popular genius and the popular educa- 
tion, I know not how better to express, in a few words, their 
beginning, life, and results, than by quoting the lines of a 
charming poetess : — 



BEFORE THE CHARITABLE MECHANIC ASSOCIATION. 149 

" There walks a spirit o'er the peopled earth ; 
Secret his progress is, unknown his birth : 
Where'er he turns the human brute awakes, 
And roused to better life liis sordid hut forsakes ; 
He thinks, he reasons, glows with purer fires, 
Feels finer wants, and burns with new desires. 
Obedient nature follows where he leads, — 
The steaming marsh is changed to fruitful meads ; 
Then from its bed is diawn the ponderous ore. 
Then comujerce pours her gifts on every shore ; 
Then kindles fancy, then expands the heart, 
Then blow the flowers of genius and of art." 

Gentlemen, I conclude as I began, by felicitating yon over 
the present condition of your association, and by adding my 
appreciation to that which you must have of your position in 
the great confederacy of arms and of arts. Your exhibition 
represents the power of New England in war and in peace. 
The mechanics of Massachusetts bore a leading part in the 
opening scenes of the recent struggle. This is well illustrated 
in what General Butler has told me, — that when, in the dark 
days of the memorable April which shut oft' Washington and 
the good President from communication with the country, he 
was on his way with one of our regiments to the relief of the 
capital, and at Annapolis found the only remaining locomotive 
dismembered by rebel hands, he inquired of his men whether 
any of them could restore it ; upon which a half-dozen stepped 
forth from the ranks, saying that they had helped build that 
engine in one of the shops of Massachusetts and they could 
put it together again ; scarcely sooner said than done, and the 
Massachusetts machine speedily took a thousand Massachu- 
setts bayonets and Massachusetts hearts into Pennsylvania 
Avenue, and saved the Government from the abyss which 
was already yawning to receive it. This patriotic and effec- 
tive example was sustained by the producing classes of the 
State throughout the war, alike here at home in the prepara- 
tion of supplies and by the gallantry of her serried files in the 
field. And now, when martial scenes have disappeared, the 
same high duty rests upon the people of the Commonwealth, 



150 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

and the same lofty triumph will reward them. This pros- 
perity and happiness among ourselves, this influence, this 
credit, this renown in all our relations with the country and 
the world, plead trumpet-tongued that these arts, without 
which there can be no sceptre for us, may be developed and 
extended until they shall diffuse their benignity over all 
states and over all ages. Happy are you in the privilege of 
enjoying so conspicuous a share in advancing the civilization 
and the power of your native laud. 



SPEECH 

at a mass meeting in mechanics' hall, in worcester, feb. 10, 1866, 
Called to consider what action shall be taken by the city 
of worcester to commemorate the service of citizens who lost 
their lives in the war for the union. 

Mr. Mayor and Fellow-Citizens : 

I SCARCELY think it prudent in me or kind towards you 
that I should step aside this evening from the presence of 
other duties that have left me no hour to weigh a thought 
worthy of your occasion and your object. You will therefore 
accord to me acquittal, if, after having made the journey 
solely to redeem a promise to be present, I make my words 
as brief as the purpose of the meeting is simple. 

The subject of your deliberations transcends the limitations 
and the possibilities of the time. Within a few moments of 
mutual exhortation we are compelled to compress a contem- 
plation of events, results, and duties whicli are sufficient for 
an ordinary generation. Think how great they are. They 
comprise the preservation of the nation and the ark of its 
covenant, — the extinguishment of the first and the last great 
American rebellion, — the emancipation of four millions of 
the children of God, — the setting of our ensign on every 
continent and every sea, foremost and highest forevermore, 
— and now some inadequate yet cordial tribute to those, our 
own, who by their arms iiave achieved the work, and by their 
blood have sealed it till the earth shall give up its dead. 

It is not new, tlie building of monuments. That is ancient 
as the instincts of human nature, and antedates the historic 



152 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDEE H. BULLOCK. 

periods. Such memorials cover the earth, and have become 
the landmarks of traditions and annals. History is full of 
the questions that relate to tliem ; poetry reproduces them in 
new beauty ; and the fame of heroes breaks in immortal 
lustre from the cloud and mystery that hangs about them. 
But it is the glory of monumental structures that the men 
and tlie events they commemorate are by this instrumentality 
made to live on after the symbols have crumbled back to 
dust. The names and the deeds of public crises, which 
otherwise might fade and become uncertain,. take a new life 
from these inscriptions, they thus become fixed in the heart 
of the world, and survive ever after. They who fell at 
Thermopyhe — are they not this day better known, and will 
they not always be better known, for the memorial inscrip- 
tion of Simonides, though the material letters have long 
since passed away ? That high occasion is as fresh and as 
inspiring now, after the lapse of two thousand five hundred 
years, as when the renowned Greek laid his inscription 
there. The people who are capable of living through great 
eras, like that from which we have just emerged, with- 
out raising some tablet, some shaft, some memorial, grand 
as the battle and the victory, prove themselves incapable of 
enduring and patriotic virtue. 

The recent war has taken from our streets, our shops, our 
dwellings, two hundred and fifty souls, the flower of our 
homes, forever. In the dew of their youth, or in the prime 
of tlieir manhood, they laid down their lives for a cause. 
Let us set apart something from our prosperity to commem- 
orate the victory of the cause. 

Let him who talks largely his belief in the destiny of 
democratic representative government now render his trib- 
ute to those who had the courage of their opinions and 
carried them down to untimely graves. 

Let him who has spoken anti-slavery years in and out, 
safely at home, now relax the strings of his heart and his 
purse, that both may open in the presence of the entire de- 



SPEECH AT A MASS MEETING IN WORCESTER. 153 

structiou of slavery, and in the presence of the ghastly death 
of his townsmen and brothers, who bnried it with their 
own bodies. 

Let hirn who cheers the flag on all festal days now con- 
tribute the income of one day in the year, to inscribe 
conspicuously in the public square the names of those who 
bore proudly that ensign in every battle from the Potomac 
to the warm bayous, who felt it fanning their cheeks as they 
died, and gave it back triumphant to their countrymen for a 
thousand years to come. 

Let him who looks complacently on the attitude of his 
country in the group of all the nationalities of the globe — 
that attitude nev^er so majestic as now — remember them, the 
young and the brave, who stood fearless before the combined 
menaces of France and England, whose present disappoint- 
ment wails around their headboards. 

Let him — if one such there be in this city of humanity 
and patriotism — who recollects that he gave during the war 
as little as possible save the cold shoulder to his country, make 
henceforth his amnesty with the shades of the departed, and 
drop the repentant tear on the monument his own hands 
shall help to raise. 

Mr. Mayor, I am not master of that propriety which 
would enable me to speak fitly and personally of the slain 
of our city. Of the two hundred and twenty-three non- 
commissioned officers and privates, I knew many ; of the 
twenty-six commissioned of&cers, nearly all. I cannot without 
exposure to misconstruction indulge in discrimination. Yet 
especially one, in our joint civil service, had made me his 
friend. Parker called to give me his hand when he first 
went forth at the early reverberation from Fort Sumter, and 
each time afterwards. In the later interviews I learned 
more than all I knew before, of the field, from him. As you 
thought then, he need not have gone ; high honors at home 
were in store for him ; he ought not to have died, — for there 
was unfortunate practice. But all the brighter the crown of 



154 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

his service. His last imcomplainiug words were told me, 
the dirge which heralded his returning body through this 
broad avenue has long since subsided, and it only remains 
for me that I may unite with his fellow mechanics in carv- 
ing a wreath around his name. And so I pass by the sons 
of my neighbors who have left them, and mention one other 
less known to most of you. When the Twenty-fifth Eegi- 
ment, after its re-enlistment, came home on a furlough, in 
the absence of the commander-in-chief it was assigned to 
me, as a Worcester Representative, to receive them in Fan- 
euil Hall. I recall Captain O'Neil, at the head of an Irish 
company, even then numbering seventy men, of whom all 
but four had re-enlisted. His martial bearing impressed me. 
His muscle was hard, his face was bronzed, and the whole 
contour had the handsomeness of a picture. I forced him 
upon the platform, and insisted on introducing him to the 
floor and the galleries, that received him with cheers and 
waving white. The next time I heard of him, he had gone. 
When he received the stroke which was to be speedily fatal, 
he exclaimed, " Hold the flag over me, and tell my mother 
I died for my country." And thus that sacrifice was quickly 
completed. Tell me, ye who read the light romance, and 
ye who seek inspiration in classic ages gone by, what have 
you learned more noble or more touching than that ? 

Ah, my friends, there is something in the death of soldiers, 
in the battles or prisons or the diseases of war, that comes 
over our sensibilities with mingled pathos and mystery and 
awe. I know that death is the same thing in all times and 
places ; and yet there is no other death like that of the 
soldier. Wherever brave boys ofl'er up their life amid the 
din and tumult of a battle over a righteous cause, I feel sure 
the Heavenly Father sends special angels there. Your vision 
and mine cannot pass beyond the horizon of the revealed 
and the known ; and still, while I linger over such scenes 
with a baffled knowledge, and cannot penetrate the veil, a 
voice whispers to me that there is a particular mission of 



SPEECH AT A MASS MEETING IN WORCESTER. 155 

mercy, and a grace and peace for those who do battle for the 
right and die in the cause of Freedom and of God. All 
these, our martyrs, have gone away in a manner others do 
not go. As we who stayed at home and live at home trace 
their flight, may we not break this monotony of ours with 
the utterance, — 

" I see them walking in an air of glory 
Whose light doth trample on my days, — 
My days, which are at best but dull and hoary; 
Mere glimmerings and decays." 

For this cause and this victory, for these men and these 
actions, the monument should go up. For myself, I would 
have it altogether and exclusively a soldiers' monument. I 
would not have it connected with any other institution or 
purpose or utility whatsoever. As their deeds on fields re- 
mote from us were all their own, as their death was unlike 
that which ours shall be, so the tribute accorded to them 
should be isolated utterly from our ordinary thoughts and 
pursuits. As they separated themselves from the studies and 
avocations at home for a higher life and a grander death, so 
should the memorial of them be set apart from the jostle and 
distraction of the town ; their monument should be ideal, 
separate, conspicuous. It should be such, and so located, 
that their kindred and friends and all the people may ap- 
proach it, and behold it, and behold nothing else. No shade 
should obscure it ; the sun should visit it with the circling 
hours, and the winds play perpetual music over its solemn 
inscriptions. Such, I trust, it shall rise. It shall cheer and 
animate the sorrowing. It shall inspire all citizens with 
thoughts of country, and shall quicken the currents of youth- 
ful blood. It shall be a fit memorial of every soldier son 
departed. Tlie words of Milton shall be fulfilled : — 

" Thither shall all the valiant youth resort, 
And from his memory inflame their youthful brea.st3 
To matchless valor ami adventures high; 
The virf;ins also shall on feastful days 
Visit his tomb with flowers." 



SPEECH 



AT A MEETING OF ALUMNI OF AMHERST COLLEGE, JULY 12, 1866. AT 
AMHERST. 



Mr. President and Brothers of Amherst College : 

This call, so cordial and fraternal, before which every 
thought of official relation gives way and disappears, bids 
my local and academic loyalty to respond and unbosom 
itself in this presence of the comrades and friends of the 
earlier and later days. It may be well enough that you 
should take whatever pleasure can come from a gratified 
sentiment of college relationship, or personal friendship, 
in offering welcome to the Chief Magistrate of the State 
coming hither out of the alumni of our common alma 
mater ; but for me, and to-day, the only thought is that of 
gratulation, that we hail and salute her in the period of 
her largest prosperity, — when endowments from Williston, 
Walker, and all the others make her independent,. — when 
a good personal administration makes her attractive, — 
when her many sous prove faithful to virtue and to her. 
Never before has she been able to welcome the return of 
Commencement day with such queenly dignity as now, 
when she beholds her influence spreading like the waters of 
irrigation over the globe, when she is herself no longer 
a public suppliant, when she receives the sacred kiss from a 
thousand living; and jrrateful lives. 

It has been my opportunity to observe the stately rise of 
this College. The class of 1836 have been witnesses of 
her ascending fortunes. After the State, speaking through 



SPEECH AT MEETING OF ALUMNI, AMHERST COLLEGE. 157 

the misdirected voices of the Legislature, had sent away tliis 
chQd of its charter, not only without the pittance which 
was asked for, but with angry and reproachful words, and 
after the people in response to this unkindly conduct had 
quickly raised fifty thousand dollars for the institution, it 
was my privilege, then a freshman, to co-operate with two 
hundred and fifty other undergraduates in lighting the can- 
dles of illumination at every pane of every window upon this 
hill, and to stand with them ankle-deep in the snow, bidding 
all hail to those lights that should never go out ; bidding 
defiance to the Boston lawyer who had struck his cold and 
poisoned fangs, all uuavailingly, only in the outer garments 
of our alma mater. His bitterness of the charge of " pious 
fraud " only roused lier resolute soul to that purpose of great 
and sweet revenge which lay in the Christian determination 
to appeal to the hearts and to the churclies of New England, 
and to work on with devout confidence for the good of man- 
kind. Some of us boys of sixteen said then, if God would 
spare our lives, we would again test the heart of Massachu- 
setts in the days of our manhood, and would ask her to reverse 
the unkind decree of that day. And eight years afterwards 
it was my opportunity, with my fellow alumni, among 
whom were Lord of Salem and Kellogg of Pittsfield, to try 
the question over again in the same House of Eepresentatives, 
and to witness the willing grant of the Commonwealth from 
its treasury to our cause. That was a day which I shall ever 
remember. Then our College stood for the first time vindi- 
cated and triumphant under the august sanction of the State, — 
her seal being then added to ours ; her treasury then coming 
to the aid of ours ; her recognition of Amherst in the com- 
panionship of Harvard being then established, never after to 
be repudiated. 

It was my pleasure to communicate the tidings of this 
act, so important for Amherst, to the president of my own 
college days then surviving. I allude to the late Dr. He- 
man Humphrey, now passed to the fellowship of the saints. 



158 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

He was, of all others, the patron friend and defender of this 
College. No language which I can command could convey to 
you the delight with which he received the intelligence of 
that victorious day. I stood near him ; and his face, to use 
the expression of the Scripture of the first martyr, was as if 
it had been the face of an augel. Hope elevated and joy bright- 
ened his crest. I do not know how others feel; but if I had 
stood in that situation, I would not have exchanged it for all 
that kings or people could bestow. I like to associate the name 
of Humphrey with all the triumphant days of Amherst. He 
had left a wide and prosperous pastorate to come hither, suc- 
ceeding the first president, Moore ; and he walked steadfastly 
with us all through the dismal times, never faltering but al- 
ways leading on to effulgent success. God was over him and 
with him. God conferred renown upon him here, and out of 
his loins gave to our alumni those who have since honored 
the country. One of these, the Hon. James Humphrey, has 
but recently left vacant by his death a desk in Congress, 
and has left us all mourners of his Christian spirit, of his 
pure virtues and manners that were never corrupted by the 
touch of public affairs, of his culture and his talents that are 
now all lost to the republic. But another son survives, the 
Eev. Dr. Edward Humphrey, who through the recent war 
has conducted the Presbyterian Church of the West to loy- 
alty and to freedom. 

I could not permit this occasion to pass without one word 
of tribute to the third president, the late Dr. Edward Hitch- 
cock. His biography will be written, and will be among the 
annals of American letters. He was my teacher and my 
friend, and I knew him better than all the others. He was 
the greatest genius of Western Massachusetts, and he was the 
most modest that ever was known. He had the fine spirit of 
Henry Martyn, all his enthusiasm and all his sweetness. He 
came up, at the time unobserved, out of the alluvion of the 
grand Connecticut; but he left his great tracks after him, 
more marked and more enduring than those which he had 



SPEECH AT MEETING OF ALUMNI, AMHERST COLLEGE, 159 

dug out of the hidden strata of your royal river and had 
placed in yonder cabinet, — miracle of the past and lesson to 
the future of the divine science which he loved and served. 
I rejoice to-day, aside from all personal friendship, to recall 
him among the archives of the Commonwealth. Under the 
appointment conferred upon him by ray oldest surviving 
predecessor, and my honored neighbor at home. Governor 
Lincoln, he mapped out and unfolded the geology of Massa- 
chusetts. In his first noble volume and its supplements he 
joined his own fame with the first geological studies of 
America, which were not more official in their character than 
they were perpetual in their renown. 

But the crowning successes of our alvia mater were reserved 
for the time of the presidency of him, the Eev. Dr. Stearns, 
who presides over these present festivities, and who has 
brought here the culture of Harvard and the cornered hat of 
Oxford. I like these, both of them ; and I know that I but 
speak the impulses which are mounting for expression from 
your own lips, when I say that we greet him in his official 
chair to-day because we esteem, honor, and love him for his 
own accomplished virtues, and for all that he is doing on this 
high field of learning. In his time the College enjoys in 
reality all that any ideal could hold out or express, and his 
is the enthusiasm and genius which shall connect the still 
higher ideal of our aspirations into the most certain and 
practical achievement. 

And now, Mr. President and friends of Amherst, I am 
before you in official relations, not to speak the words of 
banishment which were uttered against you more than thirty 
years ago from the State House, and which have long since 
become obsolete, but to bid you welcome to the heart and the 
hearthstone of Massachusetts, that is the patron of piety and 
learning. I come before you especially, as one of your own 
number, to unite with you in laying whatever measure of 
success or distinction we may have achieved upon the graves 
of these departed teachers, and at the feet of the living. 



160 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

Above all, I come to relieve the din of public life by the 
sound of this chapel bell; to bathe fevered temples in the 
holy atmosphere that comes from yonder mountain range and 
pervades these halls ; to search for solace among the dewdrops 
that have sweetened this classic valley and have refreshed 
two thousand students on their toiling way to immortality. 

I behold this College in the prime of her usefulness and 
fame. Her sons are abroad over the earth, — wherever the 
Church has posted its sentinels, wherever the State has chosen 
a guardian or an advocate, wherever the veil of human woe 
can be lifted, wherever the lot of humanity can take fresh 
felicity from the administration of education and religion. I 
behold this institution green to-day with the laurel of war, 
planting her own banner by the side of the banner of her 
country, and pointing proudly to the services and the deaths 
of her sons who have united the tv/o upon a hundred crimson 
fields. I meet her alumni here all eager to reinforce the 
securities of the union of States, to repair the desolation of 
the American Zion, to place the imprint of our alma mater 
beneath every good word and work, whether at the hustings 
or in the court room, whether in the churches or in the halls 
of learning or in the national councils. I give my heart back 
to her this day, and only wish that a thousandth part of her 
reward may be mine. 

I meet here also my associates, the Trustees. One of these, 
and only one, the Eev. Dr. Vaill, appeared before me in the 
same capacity thirty years ago, when I came here an utter 
stranger, not knowing an inmate of the College. Others have 
since come to the Board from the body of our alumni, fresh 
in youth or manhood, strengthened and adorned by all that 
their profession and art and culture could add to native 
genius and youthful study. The Legislature, at its recent 
session, supplied the place left vacant by Mr. Calhoun, of 
blessed memory, with a new ally, — one who, though not of 
the alumni, brings to our support an influence and a power 
which only modern America has appreciated and understood, 



SPEECH AT MEETING OF ALUMNI, AMHEEST COLLEGE. 161 

an influence and a power that reaches " across tlie continent," 
— Mr. Samuel Bowles, our colleague and our friend. Into 
the hands of these, whose term covers the period of a genera- 
tion of men, and to the Divine Head of all our fortunes, I ask 
you to unite with me in committing our beloved College, with 
hope and faith and courage. 



11 



FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 

delivered at springfield, mass., 1867. 

Fellow-Citizens of Springfield: 

In no year before, since the achievement of independence, 
has this day been publicly celebrated in so few places, and in 
no year before ought it to have been commemorated in so 
many as now. Your voluntary public spirit makes yours, 
to-day, one of the exceptional communities. It is creditable 
that you thus mark your appreciation of the historical lessons 
and duties of this particular year. 

And where else could this exception better occur than 
here, in the city of Springfield ? Now two hundred and 
thirty -one years old, incorporated when all of Massachusetts 
westward was an unincorporate wilderness, associated forty 
years later with those heroic romances of the border in which 
the stout old founders of this hamlet by their wits and their 
valor prevailed over the aborigines, bound to the cause of the 
Revolution by the hearts and the arms of its best and bravest 
men, conspicuous in the first and last insurrection under our 
State Constitution which ended in the triumph of law and 
order over anarchy, religiously faithful according to its con- 
victions in the second war with Great Britain, early among 
the foremost in the last great contest and the last great con- 
quest of American unity over separatism, — just, benevolent, 
progressive, as I believe, in all the periods, whether of peace 
or of war, Springfield is surely entitled to color the observance 
of a national holiday with the tints of her own history. 



FOUKTH OF JULY ORATION. 163 

Another fact of your situation commands my mention. 
Eemoved one hundred miles from the easterly and half that 
distance from the southerly gateway of ocean commerce, — 
only second in any sense, and in many respects first, among 
the communities of this long alluvial valley, — your town is 
peculiarly the representative of the class which, ninety years 
ago, led the way to independence. The historian of the 
United States, in his last volume, richest and best of all, has 
cliaracterized the action at Saratoga as the battle of the hus- 
bandmen, in which men of the valley of Virginia, of New 
York, and of New England fought together with one spirit 
for a common cause. We may go one step farther. The 
whole of the Eevolution was largely a war of the husband- 
men. In the hearts of the yeomanry the Eevolution took its 
inceptive fires and found its steady endurance and support. 
From the head-waters to the mouth of the central river of 
New England, rich in all its intervals and slopes, your town 
is the capital of the husbandmen. The unity of that stock 
has been best preserved and developed upon this alluvium, 
and the story and the moral of the Eevolution ought to be 
longest treasured in its descent and blood. To-day all those 
traditions and lessons are most fitly contemplated in this 
place, in holiday celebration, beneath these elms of the valley, 
which have been tlie companions of the generations and the 
witnesses of the periods. 

I have said that, if others neglect the day, you do well to 
observe it in thought of the particular lessons of this time. 
They are peculiarly lessons of this time. Ours is a history 
of growths. If, for example, you take France, which may 
be regarded as at present the foremost nation in power after 
our own, or if, for a smaller scale, you take the wretched 
and pitiable nation of Mexico, and compare them with the 
United States, they seem rather to be historically represented 
by the casualties of volcanic eruption than by those regular 
and steady developments which we term natural processes. 
Altogether different is our own situation in the iutellisible 



164 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

line of events. No man on horseback has carved out by his 
sword any one of our eras. Our historical harvests have all 
come from the planted seed and germ, and not out of any 
accident. The order of providence, of nature, and of develop- 
ment is so perspicuous in our annals tliat we may take our 
station at any point in the narrative, and see each lesson, 
understand it, and establish it in our hearts. Thus, at the 
end of these last seven years as distinctly as at the end of 
the seven years of the Eevolution, there are instructions, clear 
as human voices, which it is easy to apprehend and which it 
is a duty to heed. The late conflict, whose results we are 
now adjusting and bringing into unity for future empire, in 
its comparison with all our former struggles, I designate as 
the war of the vindication. It has vindicated, established, 
and fixed that which the wise patriots had thought before. 
It has brought into practical and imperial result all that our 
own best idealism had conceived before. I judge it to be the 
primary thing we have learned from the recent war of vindi- 
cation, that the sovereignty of the nation dominates over the 
sovereignty of the States. It has required the civil experi- 
ence of almost a century to try that question, and only an 
organic war, blazing over the States, could have settled it. 
Out of the struggle of the colonies for independence, out of 
the deep trials of the period of the Confederation, after the 
lapse of seventy years of the Constitution, the consummation 
has come at last, but not until now. It needed the chymic 
flame of this hottest of wars to clear American nationality of 
the clogs which had impeded it since the first start ; to burn 
away the limitations which the Confederation and the Con- 
stitution had partially denied in theory, but had generally 
conceded in practice ; and to set this Western -unity above 
provincialities and restrictions. You cannot fail to think 
how to reach this achievement we have had to conquer the 
instincts of the national beginning and the prejudices of the 
national growth. For these have been against it down to 
this time. 



FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 165 

It is an anomalous fact that, of all the considerable nations 
now existing, ours is the only one which has lived from the 
beginning under a written constitution. That constitutional 
period would be sliort for the Old World, but is long for the 
New. But the seeds of American nationality lie further back 
than that. The Declaration of Independence, the Confedera- 
tion, the Constitution, do not tell the whole story. Prior to 
all of them were the hundred and fifty years of settlement, of 
mutual colonial approaches and affiliations, of border wars, of 
the coming of common provincialities. These were preparing 
us for the necessities of union, but did not provide for it, as 
they could not foresee the mode of attaining it. That came 
afterward in defiance of all which had preceded. 

So that, when the Eevolution came, it was despite the 
colonial individualisms which had prevailed through four 
generations. That military union of the colonies was for a 
present necessity of defence, but did not, for it could not, 
appreciate the wants of the next generation for government 
and empire. The Declaration of Independence was grand as 
a war-cry, but was no bond of imperial government. The 
Articles of Confederation, which followed, were framed in the 
fear of central power and amid local jealousies. All were 
united against the king, but all were afraid of placing any- 
where a common overshadowing sovereignty. The sparseness 
of plantation life in the South shrank from giving power to 
the compactness of the North, tending toward commerce and 
the centralization of authority necessary to protect commerce. 
Slavery there, even then, showed its fear of freedom here. 
The Confederation proved only a joint-stock association liable 
to dissolution at any moment, because it conferred no central 
power for raising taxes or soldiers, for enforcing a treaty 
abroad or compelling a State at home. It was rich in pro- 
visions for individual liberty, but it was poverty itself as a 
unit of sovereignty. It sprung out of provincialism, and it 
came only to statism, and not to nationality. It was a grand 
stage of progress, but it could not be a consummation. 



166 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

Then, as a consequence, the Constitution came next. If 
you read Madison's journal of the convention which framed it, 
you will see how, through four months of deliberation, the 
jealousy between freedom and slavery, the attachment of sep- 
aratism, and the dread of unity constantly impeded and 
nearly defeated the last and only hope of one constitutional 
government. Even the little pocket State of Delaware threat- 
ened to break up the deliberations, and to appeal to some 
foreign sword for protection against sister States. By a won- 
der of wisdom, scarcely below a miracle, the Government 
whose banner floats over us to-day was agreed uj)on ; and by 
another marvel, which only the transcendent genius of Ham- 
ilton and Madison could have achieved, it was confirmed by 
the people. It is the only written constitutional government of 
a great nation worthy of mention in all the world at this time. 
Its greatest apparent weakness was in its forbearance to del- 
egate the power of the States to the central sovereignty. We 
have learned that in the late war. The necessity of that for- 
bearance was inevitable. The jealousy of the small States 
relative to- the large, — the complications and the animosities 
of the sections, — slavery, the touchstone of all trouble in 
America from 1620 until now, — these compelled the great 
omissions in the Constitution. 

Those omissions were concentred in the lack of an ex- 
pressed authority of the central unity over the separate parts. 
Accordingly, from the commencement, while Washington was 
the first President, and Adams was the second, even thus 
early, the centrifugal powers of this Government began tlieir 
motion and effect. All action, all tendencies, moved from 
the centre toward the several States. Jefferson helped on 
the tendency, even before he had got home from France. 
Madison was caught by it ; and the champion of the Con- 
stitution gave to it the most enfeebling construction by the 
Virginia resolutions of '98. Those resolutions liave been, 
next to African slavery, the cause of our war. When, long 
afterward, Webster, in reply to Hayue, endeavored to state 



FOUKTH OF JULY ORATION. 167 

the only coustruction of the Constitution under which the 
Union could survive, Madison, then an old man, explained 
away the resolutions of '98 ; hut it was too late, the mischief 
had begun its work. The school, of which Hayne was put 
fortli as first modern preceptor, but which Calhoun reorgan- 
ized and kept in the ascendant in the politics of the country 
for thirty years, outUved the demonstrations of Webster, 
the denunciations of Clay, and the invectives of Adams. 
It was the school of nulhfication, of secession, of setting at 
defiance the central Government because it could not by its 
terms enforce its decrees. The envious world beyond the 
flood took up the cry of federal weakness in America wdth 
delight. The wish of one half of Europe and the fear of the 
other half said that the American Union contained the ele- 
ments of disunion and of several ultimate commonwealths. 
That thought was common abroad, and not by any means 
uncommon here at home. And though Hayne and Calhoun 
had passed away, their theory and construction of this Gov- 
ernment remained, and took animate form, and found artic- 
ulate expression in Buchanan ; who, in the expiring hours of 
1860, opened the war of solution and vindication by promul- 
gating to the world, once more and for the last time, that the 
national sovereignty could not compel the sovereignty of the 
States. That was his last legacy of statesmanship ; those 
were his parting words, as he passed from the capital to his 
eternal retreat. He closed the doors of the old school forever ; 
and it became the lot of Abraham Lincoln to open the doors 
of the new. 

And now, fellow-citizens, after these seven years of the 
mingled strife of opinions and of arms, we have come to the 
first opportunity of gratitude and of joy for the establishment 
beyond all cavil or question of the central power of the Union, 
of the sovereignty of the unity over its parts, of the oneness 
and indestructibility of American nationality. That has been 
an open question before. The people of Europe and the peo- 
ple of the United States were in doubt upon this question 



168 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

before. But the question has now been settled for the first 
time, and for the coming centuries. It never could have 
been settled until the disputants at the South should, after 
the ordeal of fire and blood, acknowledge it to be settled. 
That time has come. They who resisted the idea of superior 
central power, by a war of words for seventy years, and by a 
war of arms for four years, which seemed longer than all the 
seventy before, agree with us in accepting trial of battle as 
the finality. Tliey enter with us upon reconstruction with 
acknowledgment of the Federal authority ; disputed before, but 
conceded now ; claimed by Hamilton and denied by Calhoun, 
demonstrated by Webster and surrendered by Buchanan, 
but established now for all time to come by the hearts and 
the arms of the people. Nothing in human history exceeds 
in grandeur the settlement of this disputed question. It 
proves that the silence of the Constitution, which has been 
accounted all over the world as its weakness, is its strength ; 
and that whatever shall be the number of the States between 
the Atlantic and the Pacific, they shall live and rule under 
one common authority and under one common flag. 

A second benefit we have derived from this war, which 
three generations of peace had failed to secure, and which ap- 
parently many generations more of peace would fail to give. 
I mean the acknowledgment of the equality of men, and 
their right to enfranchisement. We started in the career of 
nationalism with demanding of the crown the equal rights 
of mankind ; but having achieved a national independence 
under that magical tocsin, we weakened and frittered the 
principle under the supposed necessities of the compromises 
of the Constitution. Madison, the guiding genius of the Con- 
stitution, nobly denied the abstract right of man to hold 
property in man, and kept its expression out of the charter ; 
but he conceded it in disguise, under the fallacious belief 
that it could not last long as American practicality. In that 
he and his associates deceived themselves, and harassed the 
next generations. Slavery, as a part of the social and polit- 



FOUKTH OF JULY OEATION. 169 

ical organism of the United States, became the principal 
force instead of the decreasing incident in the elections and 
administrations of the Government. It was kept under, as to 
its offensive and aggressive forms, through the terms of the 
first four Presidents ; but its glittering sword came out of its 
sheath during the administration of the quiet Monroe, and 
under the claim of national necessity pointed itself against 
the heart of the Government, demanded its surrender and 
got it. That is the historical fact of 1820. The pacificatory 
and splendid patriotism of Clay stood there, midway between 
the right and the wrong. He did not yield to the shock, for 
he was too great for that ; he did not breast it outright, for 
neither he nor the people saw the need of that. And so the 
emergency was glossed over, and the Government went on as 
before. Twelve years afterward, Jackson, in the deficiency 
of his education, but in the richness of his instincts, saw 
through the error of the past and pointed out the coming 
peril. He first told this people — after he had suppressed 
the incipient rebellion of Calhoun — that negro slavery would 
be the next and great occasion of nullification, secession, and 
revolt. Let us award credit for the warning to the soldier 
President. And Jackson was right. 

How would the final trial of slavery be likely to come ? 
Its predominance was now manifestly complete, and had been 
complete from the first inauguration. It had been quiescent 
under Washington, who was too great for the approach of 
evil ; it had been in expectancy under Adams and Jefferson 
and Madison ; it had had its own way under Monroe, not 
understood by him ; it had kept out of sight under the second 
Adams and Jackson; and under the succeeding administrations 
it had been ostensibly subordinated, but in reality ascendant 
in the politics of those periods. 

Again, then, I ask, how would this fearful test be likely to 
meet us ? Surely it must come in some form at last ; for 
the whole past had told us that. The hopefulness of some 
had put the heart of the country for a time at its ease. Of 



170 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

these was Henry Clay, — always greatest among orators, and 
often greatest among statesmen. He had a theory, which 
neither he nor anybody else could prove in the presence of 
millions of black slaves increasing quite as rapidly as white 
freemen, that the African would in time disappear from the 
stage. From 1820 to 1860, a lapse of time that witnessed the 
death of a whole generation, so far as I know, only one man 
completely foresaw and foretold the event which has now 
become historical. That man was John Quincy Adams. 
Shortly before his death he declared to one who afterward 
became the builder of a new party, that negro slavery in the 
United States would disappear in the next quarter of a cen- 
tury, not peaceably, but by a revolutionary war. Those prove 
truthful words. As we read all human experience and all 
providential disposal of human affairs, this institution, stand- 
ing between the people and their peace and glory, never 
would, never could, have been abolished save by war. 

The war has not only relieved the nation of the conflicts of 
servitude by establishing universal emancipation, but it has 
given us the assurance of a homogeneous people by establish- 
ing universal suffrage. Monarchies may exist with the limited 
franchise, but in a democratic republic the francliise must be 
shackled by few restrictions. This result has been now sub- 
stantially accomplished, with the general consent. Politicians 
may continue to make tlieir dalliance over whatever yet re- 
mains of this question ; but the demand of the North and the 
acquiescence of the Soutli, tlie moral sense of the nation which 
has been made more keen by war, the judgment of the world, 
the visible tokens of the Divine will, all assure us that this 
organic reformation cannot stop short of absolute completion. 
It could never have been attained by the policies of measures 
of peace. It required the tramp of armies to break down the 
prejudices rooted by the vicious overgrowths of two centuries 
and twining around the very body of the Constitution. 

Again, we have learned from the war of vindication that an 
overruling- Providence has uruided us throuiih all the devious 



FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 171 

ways. The Supreme Architect has builded for us better and 
higher than we knew. I recognize the Divine Hand in the 
parallelism of the war of the Eevolution with the war of 
Freedom. In two eras alike, a Higher Power baffled the 
temper and the policy of the people. For the space of two 
years after the shedding of blood at Lexington, it was perliaps 
in the power of Great Britain to liave effected a reconciliation 
with the colonies without conceding their independence ; and 
even so late as 1778, the approach of commissioners of pacifi- 
cation was deemed so seductive that it needed the nervous 
words of Washington, Clinton, and Morris to brace the people, 
of whose nature it is to love tranquillity. George the Third 
was converted by his Maker into a Pharaoh, that America 
might not have a premature and fruitless peace. In the late 
war of enfranchisement, I have not doubted that at any time 
within two years after the adoption of the first ordinance of 
secession by South Carolina in December, 18G0, the insurgent 
States could have obtained peace and retained tlie system of 
slavery unbroken. There was enough of division in the 
North, there had been enough of defeat in the field, to make 
that result possible and attainable. But there was a di\inity 
which shaped our ends. Instead of one, a score of Pharaohs 
loomed up in defiance, — ministers of Providence, — to keep 
the goad still stinging the North on to freedom. 

If, before this conflict opened, there were any who were 
sceptical as to the direct interposition of the Almighty in the 
administration of human affairs, there ought to be none such 
at its close. A deist, now, is beyond imagination worse than 
those before the flood. Against our will and despite our 
plans the war was made to go on with all that change from 
success to reverse, from reverse back again to success, from 
elation to depression, from depression to the last desperate 
cry to charge along the whole line, — with all that dreariness 
of time, hope deferred, and sickness of the heart of a people, — 
whicli have characterized most of the organic reforms of the 
human race. We hear it said, that if McDowell in the early 



172 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

day had pushed from Bull Enn to Eichmond, that if in the 
next season McClellan had flashed from Malvern Hill into 
Eichmond, peace would have bloomed with the roses of '61 
or '62. Then, in the language of Washington, it would have 
been "a peace of war." No, fellow-citizens, for the work 
would have been unfinished. We might as well suppose 
that after months of torrid heat and vapor, rolling vegetable 
life to a scroll, the God of nature would make it liis rule to 
clear the air without the agency of electric sublimity and 
destruction, as to believe that the current of national vice of 
an hundred years could be changed, and tlie institutions 
rooted in the mercenary passions of three generations could 
be overturned, without the vicissitudes and agonies of pro- 
tracted war. We cannot be patriotic to-day without being 
also devout. 

And I am sure you will not neglect, in these hours of 
rejoicing, to render gratitude for the j^ersonal agencies in 
which was invested the control of the two decisive wars of 
our nationality. In all the great contests of civilization, 
some leader has appeared, recognized afterward as the agent 
of the epoch. In the American Eevolution the man was 
George Washington, in the war of vindication the man 
was Abraham Lincoln, — raised up both, as Witherspoon 
said, for the great purpose. While Washington far tran- 
scended Lincoln in the majesty and dignity of personalism, 
which wins universal applause, liis successor in many par- 
ticulars resembled him, and was in all respects scarcely 
less the pei'sonal necessity of his own time. You must re- 
member that distance lends enchantment to the view, and 
that one hundred years hence it well may be, and is likely 
to be, that Lincoln will rise then among the shades of his- 
tory as Washington rises now. Generally, in the judgment 
of mankind, lapse of time is needed for the estimate of per- 
sons. So Washington, as it has seemed to me, was not 
thoroughly and religiously appreciated as an historical char- 
acter, even in the United States, until the echo of European 



FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 173 

eulogy came back to us from the lips of Lord Brougham. 
And if we may judge by this standard, and by the prefigura- 
tions of the European press, Lincoln is quite as sure to take 
the next rank in the criticisms and disquisitions of the whole 
Eastern world in time to come. Certainly this cannot fail to 
happen if Lincoln shall find in the future historian half so 
generous a chronicler as Washington has found in Bancroft. 

At all events, evident it is that God raised up these two 
men for a control and management of the destinies of their 
periods. Tlie last was as great, as important, as characteristic, 
for his time as the former was for his own. Both were essen- 
tial, because both had been not only chosen by the people, 
but had been appointed from above. If the first went beyond 
the second in the breadth and magnitude of his individual 
scope, the second equalled him in faithfulness to his own 
mission. As to each of them, the crisis of his appointment 
and destination needed his own peculiarities and his own 
powers. In Washington and in Lincoln alike, the qualities 
predominant, the qualities which determined their epochs, 
were those of prudence, of caution, and of foresight. These 
are not merits of merely temporary eclat, but they are merits 
of historical and enduring fame. The prudence and the 
patience of both commanded the confidence of the people. 
Washington was surpassed in brilliancy by men of his staff; 
Lincoln was exceeded by his civilians and generals in the 
qualities attributed to genius. But both, equally the agents 
of Divinity, were the engrossing figures of their times. Before 
Washington the splendors of Greene, Hamilton, and La Fay- 
ette pale tlieir military and civic fires ; and before Lincoln 
the renown of Seward, Grant, and Sherman takes a secondary 
light and reflects back upon him their own as a borrowed 
flame. Both excelled as students and warriors in the schools 
of continental struggles. Both were the instruments of na- 
tional felicity, and the two will pass down the lengthening 
lines of posterity equal benefactors, — the one, the father of 
independence ; the other, the restorer and liberator of his 



174 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

country. This present Fourth of July solemnizes their mutual 
fame, and confidently, tenderly, and sacredly transmits their 
names in fellowship to the future ages. 

The consummation of the past and the security for the 
future are greatly in our own hands. We have had an ideal 
country before ; but henceforth, if we and our children be 
true, humble, and brave, we shall have the realization of all 
tliat was ideal before. 

We have boasted heretofore of being the benevolent and 
free republic. Now we are to be such in fact. The personal 
liberty of man, and the freedom of the elective franchise to 
all, are the rich fruit of the war, and will constitute the 
strength and grandeur of the future republic. No other 
country in either hemisphere can assert an equal claim ; no 
other could have attained to it by peace or by war. 

We are to be a unity of national strength hereafter, to 
which all the parts acknowledge their subordination. That 
we have talked of, but that we have never had before. We 
are to have it in all the time to come, as the spirits of the 
brave Union dead, and Grant and Sheridan on the one side, 
and Longstreet and Thompson on the other, among the living, 
and Congress and the people, support the declaration. We 
are to have it for enjoyment, for power, for glory, — one 
central national authority, no longer to be assailed at home, 
forever invincible from abroad. Not much longer have we any 
quarrels to adjust among ourselves. If we have any questions 
to settle abroad, we can now afford to offer the example of our 
past as the guaranty of our future, and hold forth the flag of 
the indivisible union of the States, now strengthened, as the 
source of inspiration to our sense of justice and equity, and 
of our confidence that we can and will maintain the credit of 
American nationality. 

Already we survey the fields upon w^hich the patriotic 
energy of our countrymen now seeks diversion and employ- 
ment. The desert is overcome, the Indian retreats as the 
rail is extended, valleys bid welcome and the mountains are 



FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. 175 

obeisant, and the national pathway from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific will shortly be completed and connect the peoples of 
the two shores of the continent. The spirit and the muscle 
which conquered revolt and restored union, which rooted out 
servitude and builded enfranchisement, will make the States 
of the North American Union, present and to come, one cita- 
del of a common nation, one abode of a common people, one 
farm and workshop of a common prosperity and happiness. 

Permit me to share with you, of the city of Springfield, in 
this happiness and this renown which shall belong to us all. 
Permit me to rejoice with you that the time of peace has 
come, and with it universal enfranchisement and invincible 
unity. Henceforth let us fondly believe that for indepen- 
dence, for humanity, for all imperial functions, the boundless 
continent is ours. Portland and San Francisco, Springfield 
and Omaha, are neighbors in the august fraternity whose 
banner we salute this morning. It is well that we salute 
that banner here. It is here that the old traditions survive, 
and it is here that some of the old blood remains. No other 
spot, for local or general history, can lay higher claim to con- 
spicuous rank in this holiday commemoration. Here patriot- 
ism and humanity have from the beginning found a shelter 
and a home. Here then, to-day, in this capital of the far- 
stretching alluvium, it is fit that the descendants and repre- 
sentatives of the husbandmen should assemble in patriotic 
purpose. I deem it high honor to meet with you in such 
cause and memorial beneath these ancient sweeping elms of 
Hampden, — more affluent in traditions, more exhilarating, 
grander by far than 

" Groves whose rich trees weep odorous gums and balms, 
Others whose fruit, burnished with golden rind, 
Hang enviable." 



ADDRESS 

BEFORE THE WORCESTER AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, SEPT. 17, 1868, AT THE 
PRESENTATION OF RESOLUTIONS IN MEMORY OF THE LATE LEVI LIN- 
COLN, EX-GOVERNOR OF THE COMMONWEALTH, AND FOR MANY YEARS 
PRESIDENT OF THIS SOCIETY. 

Mr. President, — In offering for the consideration of the 
society the resolutions which I hold in my hand I almost 
deem it unnecessary to say that he who is the subject of them 
bore an active part, fifty years ago, in the organization of this 
institution. He was one of its first board of officers, under 
his father, the senior Governor Lincoln, as president. He 
delivered the inauguration address before the society at its 
first public exhibition, forty-nine years ago. Five years later 
he was chosen its president, and continued to hold the office 
without interruption for the period of nearly thirty years, 
when of his own choice he retired. I propose his memory 
to-day, accompanied with no other thoughts or reflections 
than such as flow from the present occasion and from his 
relations to this association. His career in public life and 
political station, and all his connections with other objects 
and organizations, I pass over, and ask you to remember him 
as long time the president and at all times the friend of 
the Worcester Agricultural Society. I ofier the following 
resolutions : — 

Resolved, by the members of the Worcester Agricultural Society, 
that we share with the general public in deploring the decease of 
Levi Lincoln ; whose life, character, and reputation were cherished 
by all the people of this Commonwealth, and were especially near 



ADDRESS IX MEMORY OF LEVI LINCOLN. 177 

and dear to his fellow-citizens and neighbors in the city and county 
of his nativity and residence. 

Resolved, especially, that we desire to make enduring record of 
our appreciation of the service he rendei'ed to this society through 
the uninterrupted period of half a century, one of its originators 
and organizers, its first recording secretar}^, its president for twenty- 
eight years, at all times and in all seasons its eloquent advocate, 
constant contributor, and devoted friend. 

Resolved, that we hold out to all our members, and to all whom 
our influence may reach, the worthy and brilliant example of our 
lamented friend, as an illustration of the honor and dignity which 
may be attained, beyond all distinction of office or station, by a 
just and pure life passed amid rural pursuits and in the cultiva- 
tion of the higher sentiments of human nature. 

Mr. President, the present season is an eminently proper 
occasion for recalling to the attention and gratitude of those 
now living the services of that class of gentlemen, of whom 
our late townsman remained latest among us, who in the 
early years of the present century conferred a lasting benefit 
upon the whole community by organizing the first agricul- 
tural societies. I refer to Worcester, Essex, and Hampshire. 
One of these finds its own existence interwoven with the life 
of Timothy Pickering, and the associates of his time iu the 
East ; another cannot write its history without contributing 
to the biography of Governor Strong, the Millses, the Bateses, 
and the Aliens, so well known as the river gods of the West- 
ern valley; and the third, our own society, in setting up a 
stone to mark the stage of fifty years, would be guilty of 
unnatural neglect if it were not to inscribe most prominently 
the name of Governor Lincoln, as its founder and most 
steadfast patron and friend. 

There are those now present who can bear w^itness to the 
comprehensive views he took of the whole field of agricul- 
ture, and the freedom with which he discussed them and 
impressed them upon others. The characteristics of the soil 
and the best modern arts and methods of developing and 



178 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

improving them ; the rotation of crops and their several 
adaptations to particular localities ; the kinds of animals 
fitted to the varying towns of this entire section of the State, 
and the history of their introduction, crossing, and improve- 
ment, — these and kindred topics were quite at his com- 
mand, and he treated them so frequently and so well as to 
become the best educator we have ever had in the county 
for all that appertains to the business of an agricultural 
society. 

He once gave me in private conversation an historical ac- 
count of the short-horn, occupying half an hour, and fit to 
have been taken down by a reporter for preservation. If 
there be any man in the State who is better informed than 
he was upon this class of subjects, I know not where he may 
be found. His power of practical generalization was dis- 
played in this field of inquiry, and he so classified and 
arranged the topics as to bring the whole together into a 
noble system of organic husbandry. We always felt, when 
listening to his talk upon these things here and elsewhere, 
that he dignified what we call agriculture, and raised 
our thoughts of it as of something greater and higher 
than a mere mechanical necessity for subsisting the human 
family. 

It must be pleasant to a great many persons now living to 
remember this Worcester Society as it comes back to them 
from the days of his presiding, and it is no disparagement of 
any of his successors if some of us cannot make the associa- 
tion seem quite the same thing that it was to us under his 
control and management. My earliest recollections of a cattle 
show are of coming hither as a boy, nearly forty miles, and 
witnessing the dignity and affability with which he presided, 
and the interest with which he inspired all who were around 
him. Many of you know how patient in that relation he 
was of every detail, so that it appeared that he could not 
formerly have been more painstaking in administering the 
affairs of the Commonwealth than afterwards in directing 



ADDRESS IN MEMORY OF LEVI LINCOLN. 179 

these. His hospitality after the labors of the show-day were 
over, when committee-men assembled under his roof to con- 
dense in the fellowship of the evening the somewhat diver- 
sified and perhaps somewhat incoherent lessons of the field 
and the pens, will long be remembered by every one who 
ever shared it. The best farmers from distant towns went 
away with an enlarged sense of the elevation and importance 
of their vocation, and felt encouraged to strive more stoutly 
in the next year's competition. I make much allowance for 
the large increase in the number of these societies and the 
consequent reduction of the power of the old ones, — and 
more still for the modern horse-furore which carries all before 
it, and to which those who would not nevertheless do yield 
for the sake of the receipts, — and yet even more for the over- 
shadowing predominance of the modern mechanic arts over 
the, smaller department of agriculture, — and after all these 
allowances, I have an opinion that our friend could accom- 
plish more and better results than any man I ever knew, in 
keeping up the influence of an agricultural society upon the 
base of its original design. 

You and I know with what reluctance he gave up his 
opposition to the introduction of the trial of the speed of 
horses as a prominent item in the programme of our institu- 
tion ; for he knew, as he once said to me, that the incident 
would in due time become the principal. Let us respect him 
for that, even while we give way to the fulfilment of his pre- 
diction, which subordinates to-day that is assigned for the 
cattle below to-morrow wliich belongs to the horses. I will 
not raise the question which of the two we ought to respect 
the more highly in the peerage of the race, whether it should 
be Devon or Derby. That you may answer each one for 
himself. For myself, amid all the excitement of cable de- 
spatches from the English course, — announcing silver plate 
and fabulous wagers won or lost according to the infinitesimal 
part of a second of time achieved by the fleetest hoof, with 
the name of the progenitor sire annexed, — I like to repeat 



180 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

what Mr. Webster, standing in the centre of his herd at 
Marshfield, twenty years ago, told me the Duke of Devon 
had said to him : " Politically my domain may cease to en- 
dure perhaps sooner than I could wisli ; but I console my- 
self with the reflection that my name shall be respected so 
long as the noble race of cattle which bears it shall continue 
to exist in England." 

The farmer of Marshfield and the farmer of Worcester, 
contemporaries and friends in almost all other things, were 
assimilated in the possession and cultivation of this instinct 
and taste. On the day already referred to, when, with a party 
of friends, Mr. Webster had perambulated his twelve hundred 
acres and had shown to us his fields, his cattle, and his barns, 
we noticed the stable well stocked with horses and carriages, 
and asked that we might not fail to see them. " Certainly," he 
said, " here are some horses, quite handsome and excellent, I 
believe, wdiich have been presented to me by generous friends. 
Look at them and judge. I profess to know how to build a 
barn, and to understand the best cow in an hundred, but these 
horses are a little out of my line." And you remember that, as 
his last days on earth approached, he requested that he miglit 
be propped up in his chair by the window, and that his cattle 
should be driven up before him for his last inspection. It 
was a review, true to nature, just prior to his final departure. 
He liked those faces, and turned his own towards them with 
a confidence which the last hours of a man make solemn and 
worthy of respect. 

In the exercises at yonder church in funeral honor to 
Governor Lincoln, my greatly esteemed friend, the Rev. Dr. 
Ellis, — who had been long time an intimate in the famil}^, 
and who, better than most persons, was fitted to speak of 
the departed, — with his quick sagacity as to the features of 
urban and rural life, made special mention of this point in 
the life of the good Governor. He said : — 

" The joys of his childhood were so associated with the objects 
and interests of a farm that, to the very end of his lengthened 



ADDRESS IN MEMORY OF LEVI LINCOLN. 181 

days, and most so when nearest to it, he found his occupation and 
delight in the same cherished pursuits. A guest in his dehghtful 
home, who had gone to his rest at night as in a city mansion, 
would awake in early morning to the lowing of kine and the 
cackling of fowls. Looking from one side of the house he would 
see the beautiful flower garden with its conservatory, and on the 
other the herd going out to pasture and the yoked oxen to their 
labor." 

To me, living directly opposite his residence and observing 
for many years his daily ways, this picture of the Governor 
by Dr. Ellis was peculiarly truthful and charming. Looking 
out from my chamber window at an early hour in the summer 
mornings, I used to call attention to the Governor emerging 
from his dwelling, a little 'in advance of the rest of us, to 
review his line of Ayrshires as they passed by him to tlie 
green fields beyond. His fondness and knowledge of good 
stock found expression in as choice words as could be bestowed 
upon a fine landscape. In this particular he was one of the 
pioneers of the present era of taste and sentiment for the 
higher grades of the animals which is ennobling the people 
of this Commonwealth. From the day of Edmund Burke, — 
who, amid the thickening of the terrible public drama of that 
time, found solace and invigoration among his herd at Bea- 
consfield, — there has been nothing better in the education 
and exaltation of the mass of the community than is ex- 
hibited now in the care and fondness bestowed by the 
people of Massachusetts upon the improved kinds of ani- 
mals. And I have not met with any one who engaged in 
this method of promoting the general welfare, and making 
the cultivation of live-stock almost an ideal employment, 
with more genuine sentiment than our departed friend and 
president. 

He was thoroughly in sympathy with all the growths and 
symbols of beauty in nature. Of course he was a lover of 
trees. I make this one of the tests of a true and sympathetic 
man. In the matter of our sensibilities the great poet has 



182 ADDKESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

given undue precedence to sound over sight. I do not know 
but every stranger to the " concord of sweet sounds " should 
be given over to " treason, stratagems, and spoils ; " certainly, 
at least, this rhapsody of Shakespeare on music, as some one 
has said, has furnished every vacant fiddler with something 
to say in defence of his profession. But what do you say of 
a man or woman who does not warm under the concord of 
sweet sights, — of trees and tlowers ? In the lifetime of the 
late Governor we were wont to indulge in facetiousness over 
his position of championship and antagonism in the behalf of 
all standing trees. So far as I am aware, he was never known 
to be willing that one should be taken down unless under 
some authority almost equivalent to the exercise of the right 
of eminent domain. He knew the ages and could verify the 
concentric rings of most of the trees in our neighborhood. A 
generation ago he boldly cut the finest private avenue of the 
city and planted his home on it, — then quite remote from 
Main Street, and called Oregon, — saving old trees and plant- 
ing new ones, now old. As a consequence, in later years, 
new-comers found the ash, the maple, and the elm in the 
centre of the brick sidewalks ; the municipal authorities did 
not like to cross his feelings, and artifice had to be resorted 
to in some instances to clear the encumbrance from the 
walk. He believed in front yards and ample lawns and 
green leaves. 

Flowers, too, he appreciated beyond most men, and guarded 
them to their tenderest roots. There was most excellent sen- 
timent in him for these, though no overflow of sentimentality. 
He could not translate the technical language of flowers like 
Van Buren, but he enjoyed and cultivated them as ministers 
and agents in the divine poetry of human life. I dwell upon 
this, because, in my judgment, it ought to pass for much in 
the estimate of a real country gentleman. He manifested this 
taste at festive boards, and, observing beautiful groups of vine 
and blossom drooping from the stand, he would say that it 
must have cost the gardener a pang to cut such clusters. He 



ADDRESS IN MEMORY OF LEVI LINCOLN. 183 

reminded me of the late Mr. Choate, who was known to carry 
back a bough to the trunk from which he had torn it, in the 
belief, as he said, that possibly there might be some yearning 
between the parent stock and the disrupted shoot. Such 
men, by their natural sympathies expressed in courtly words, 
make the world attractive to others. 

But trees, above all things, Governor Lincoln believed in 
and admired. He had inherited from his birth in this inte- 
rior county an appreciation of outdoor life and the manly and 
healthful pursuits of the country. His father's house was 
amid original groves. He himself had been born upon the 
verge of the modern clearing and on the margin of the later 
civilization. By nature and right lie retained unto the end 
his love of the rural scenes in which he had been cradled. 
The relations of his family carried him backward to the days 
of Worcester County colonization, and he kept this memory 
fresh and practical. These clay hills of Worcester, unchanged 
since the creation, covered largely, until within my recollec- 
tion, with the primeval woods, — the sublime grouping of the 
Monadnock and the Wachusett and the smaller ranges and 
spurs intervening between them and us, — the spring verdure 
on the plains, deepened and enriched all the way for forty 
miles around with gleam of water and graver shade of em- 
bowering forests, — the richest variegations of the autumn 
and winter, comprising the hues of October and the leafless 
branches of December, — the wooded and icy galleries of 
January and February, extending througli all the county from 
tliis town to the White Hills, — the perennial banners of pine 
and hemlock and fir that hang out over all this northerly 
circuit, so much observed and admired by our fatliers, — these 
had for him the sanction of the lords of the soil of a former 
generation, and received his constant love and respect. 

" In sucli green palaces the first kings reigned, 
Slept in their shades, and angels entertained ; 
With such old counsellors they did advise, 
And, by frequenting sacred groves, grew wise." 



184 ADDEESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

It seemed to me that Governor Lincoln kept off old age by- 
renewing bis youth in sympathy with each recurring sp)ring 
and summer. In my last visit to his chamber, only a short 
time before his death, he said that until within a year he had 
never thought or felt that he was an old man. And some of 
you must have noticed, as I frequently have within the past 
ten years, that on public occasions any allusion to him as 
aged or venerable evidently was not relishable to him. Old 
age in him was not churlish, or querulous, or so unresponsive 
as with many men at his time of life. He appeared fond to 
show that he believed in that age whose pillars are raised on 
the foundations of youth. To him this felicity came in great 
part from being constantly in communion and intercourse with 
the outward and visible world. He meant to know what was 
going on to the end. No person knew better than he, every 
year until the last, what was exhibited here, and from what 
town and farm, and how and by whom raised, and by what 
process brought into a condition fit for this exhibition of the 
wonders of the earth. He was, all his life, awake and sensi- 
tive to the growth and expansion of his country ; and true to 
the sentiments which had descended to him from his ances- 
tors, he stood by his country's colors bravely through three 
wars, and never more gallantly than in the last. By unin- 
termitted familiarity with the life of society, and with the 
ceaseless activities of the animal and vegetable kingdom, he 
kept his own being vital and fresh, as if supplied from the 
sources of perpetual youth. Accordingly, instead of trying to 
think that he was neglected, or that his day had gone by, as 
old folks are too apt to say, he knew better, and gratefully 
realized in every day's experience that he was in the full 
enjoyment of 

" That which should accompany old age, 
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends." 

The last years of his life were marked by something of the 
ancient patriarchal serenity, and would stand the test of 



ADDRESS IN MEMOKY OF LEVI LINCOLN, 185 

the best sentiment and style of Cicero's philosophy for old 
age. 

And thus, gentlemen of the Worcester Agricultural Society, 
as your president drew nearer and nearer the goal, he illustrated 
that law of our existence whicli I have sometimes thought, ac- 
cordiDg to all just conceptions of our human lot, is as unerring 
as the law of gravitation, — the rule of the sympathy and 
affinity of man to the earth whence he sprung and to wliich 
he must return. Above all others, those who are engaged in 
the cultivation of the soil and are in daily observation and 
study of the miracles of the natural world, alike perceive and 
exemplify this law. So did he in a large and appreciable 
sense. The last labors and the last thoughts of such are in 
tranquil association with the myriad lessons coming from this 
common mother earth, to which the mortal part of us must 
go back to find its rest. Even under the heathen philoso- 
phies the advanced stage of human life found its keener 
pleasures in pursuits relating to the culture of the soil. 
Under the Christian dispensation this tie is more bright and 
vital, and vibrates with grander thoughts and joys. The 
higher aspects of the contemplation and cultivation of the 
land break to the gaze of the Christian agriculturist, " as he 
moves forward himself toward the great crisis of his being, 
catching an intelligent glimpse of the grand arcana of nature 
exhibited in the creative energy of the terrestrial elements ; 
the suggestive mystery of the quickening seed and the 
sprouting plant; the resurrection of universal nature from 
her wintry grave." 

And so he died. A few months after his last visit to these 
srounds, and in fond remembrance of the benefit and the 
blessing he had here learned and taught through the long 
time of fifty years, he himself was " sown a natural body, to 
be raised a spiritual body." The analogies of growth and 
ripening and decadence which had crowded on his thought and 
study for half a century, followed him in happy fruition to the 
spot where, under his own hendocks and amid the first leaves 



18G ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

of June, we laid him iu the cemetery which his eloquence 
had consecrated a generation before with pathos and splendor. 
And so he went away from our presence. 

" Of no distemper, of no blast, he died, 

But fell like autumn fruit that mellowed long ; 
Even wondered at Vjecause he dropt no sooner. 
Fate seemed to wind him up for fourscore years ; 
Yet freshly ran he on six winters more, 
Till, like a clock worn out with eating time, 
The wheels of weary life at last stood still." 



ADDRESS 

BEFORE THE WORCESTER COUNTY FREE INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE, 

NOV. 11, 1868. 

Mr. Peesident, — At this stage of the exercises it only 
remains for me to unite with others in congratulating the 
friends of the School of Industrial Science on having reached 
the degree of success which is expressed by these ceremonies 
of inauguration. Though the beneficent purposes of the 
school are yet to be accomplished, the liberality ^nd vigor 
which have established these material foundations and super- 
structures, in accordance with plans so comprehensive, are 
a guaranty that no part of the original design shall fail for 
want of means or public spirit. In addition to the endow- 
ment furnished by tlie original founder, the amount contrib- 
uted by others has been rarely if ever equalled in this section 
of the country in any similar undertaking and in an equal 
period of time. To the first donor, Mr. Boyntou, and to all 
those citizens who have come forward to make his donation 
certain and successful, — of whom two, Mr. Salisbury and 
Mr. Washburn, ought to be especially mentioned and at all 
times remembered, — not only this particular community, but 
the people of the whole Commonwealth, are under lasting 
obligation. 

The memory of great benefactions ought to be enduring. 
I sometimes think that our familiarity with the quickly ac- 
cumulated fortunes, and the almost lavishment of benevo- 
lence of tlie last few years, has made us too insusceptible 
to the common duty of gratitude for the munificence which 



188 ADDRESSES OF ALEXxVNDER H. BULLOCK. 

abounds in our community. Some of us remember with 
what sensation it was promulgated over the country, only a 
little more than twenty years a,go, that Mr. Abbott Law- 
rence had made a gift of fifty thousand dollars to establish 
the Scientific School at Cambridge. It happened to me, 
about that time, to be at the same hotel with liim in the city 
of New York. It also occurred that the President of the 
United States was then present, on a visit to the metropolis. 
An intelligent and public-spirited citizen of Tennessee came 
to me and said, " I desire to be introduced to Mr. Abbott 
Lawrence, of your State ; for I would rather take the hand 
that can open with a donation of fifty thousand dollars in the 
cause of Education, than to shake hands with the President." 
And now here, in the retired abodes of the rural County of 
Worcester, we have three men, who have not been hunted 
out, but who have come forth of their own volition, each of 
whom has given for that noble cause a much larger sum 
than the one I have just mentioned. In cordial sympathy 
with the prayer of Dr. Sweetser, who opened the exercises 
of consecration this morning, we. ought to be tliankful to 
Him who is the disposer not only of events but of the hearts 
of men that produce events, that we live in a society where 
such things as these are performed. 

The institution which we open for use to-day is a stage in 
advance of all considerable attempts which have been hitherto 
made, in Massachusetts, for the promotion of the study of 
what we call the natural and physical sciences. The first of 
such efforts resulted in the establishment of the Museum 
of Comparative Zoology, at Cambridge. Devoted to the study 
of the whole of living existence, of all orders of being, from 
man through every gradation to the feeblest vital organism 
that can be discovered, it is a monument to the interest 
which the State has manifested in one department of this 
general class of studies. It has been endowed with half a 
million of dollars, coming about equally from the public treas- 
ury and private citizens. In the hands of its great master, 



BEFORE THE FREE IXSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE. 189 

Mr. Agassiz, — I am half inclined to call liim the great magi- 
cian of nature, — it is helping into world-wide fame, not only 
him, but the Commonwealth of his adoption. But in manj 
particulars that is a school of abstract study, as distinguished 
from that which is palpably practical and in immediate 
relation with the producing powers and capacities of men. 
The only two other leading institutions we have in the 
domain of physical science — the Scientific School of Harvard 
University and the Institute of Technology at Boston — 
have aimed to supply this deficiency by bringing what are 
termed the useful arts into profound study and direct appli- 
cation to the social progress of our time. Of the Institute of 
Technology I have a high appreciation. In my judgment it 
aims to meet the exigencies of this age with a broader scope 
than any other institution that has been established in the 
United States. Passing through its rooms, witnessing the 
facilities appropriated to the pursuit of mathematics, design, 
and drawing, descending to the laboratory and beholding tlie 
young men applying their own thought to actual experiment 
with the free use of water, steam, and gas-light, all the ele- 
ments and all the apparatus, any man in the visit of an hour 
must be satisfied that an advanced position, not realized 
before, has been attained in the ever widening field of edu- 
cation. But the school whose doors are now thrown open 
to dwing free on this eminence is designed, as I suj^pose, to 
be devoted, not less than the Boston Institute, to the ele- 
mentary studies which precede, accompany, and stimulate 
the development of the useful arts, while besides it com- 
prises the department of practical mechanism, which has not 
as yet been attached to the former. That, I apprehend, may 
be found to be the right arm of this institution. Here is a 
building which is dedicated to the pursuit of the wonder- 
working forces and agencies of mechanic art, and which is to 
be supplied with the conveniences, and, so to speak, with 
the temptations that shall entice the thought, ingenuity, 
taste, and aptitude of a young man into acquaintance with 



190 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOOK. 

the processes which distinguish, as characteristics, this me- 
chanical age in which we live. Here we are to have not 
only the abstract instruction, — the research, reflection, and 
contemplation of the student, ranging over all authorities 
and theories in the broad field of mechanical powers and 
combinations, — but we are to have also the illustration at 
hand ; the thing of beauty, as it lay in the imagination, is 
to be wrought out before the eye of the student and by his 
own fingers, — the golden chain is here connecting theory 
with practice, to find which so many men in all the callings 
of industry have passed years of time between the school of 
their study and the shop of their success. He was a wise 
man who connected this department with the institution ; 
and he is the generous benefactor who supplies and sup- 
ports it. 

Mr. President, this school comes to us at the right time, 
but none too soon, in aid and furtherance of the drift of our 
civilization. Intelligence, acting through the useful arts, is 
the vital principle of modern civilized society. The mech- 
anician is now master of the situation. Those communi- 
ties are now foremost in wealth, in culture, and in all the 
methods of moral influence, which are foremost in the de- 
velopment and use of the arts. They conquer in war, and 
they rule in time of peace. According to statements made 
by approved English writers several years ago, and making- 
proper allowance for the increase since, the spinning ma- 
chinery of Great Britain, tended perhaps by three or four 
hundred thousand workmen, produces more yarn than could 
have been produced by four times the entire population of 
the kingdom if using the one-thread wheel ; and the amount 
of work now performed by machinery in England is proba- 
bly equivalent to that of the whole population of the globe 
if performed by direct labor. Striking and almost incredi- 
ble as such statements appear, they are at this moment 
measurably in process of reproduction in some of the States 
of New England, and in none more conspicuously than in 



BEFORE THE FREE INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE. 191 

our own State. According to the last official tables of our 
industry, published two years since, the annual product of 
values in Massachusetts was more than seven hundred mil- 
lion dollars, — or nearly two and a half millions for every 
working day in the year. I allow something for the infla- 
tion of war values ; but any excess from that source is prob- 
ably not greater than the amount of production overlooked 
in making the returns, and therefore I take the footing to 
be a fair one. Now I need not say that this quickening and 
awakening of the industries — this type of the modern civ- 
ilization — comes in a great proportion from intelligence 
working by machinery. It is the intellect, the reason, the 
thought, the imagination, the taste of our men, and of our 
women as well, working through the thousand-handed en- 
gineries and agencies which the God of nature ha placed in 
their control and inspired them to employ. Our own city 
of Worcester is a remarkable example of the improvement 
in these arts. Having had some opportunities for making 
the comparison, I can in all sincerity declare that I do not 
know the community in this country which leads a more 
busy, intelligent, and happy life. I do not know what the 
papers of the Patent Office Department at Washington 
might show, but it has occurred to me frequently, reading 
the current lists of patented inventions, that, with the ex- 
ception of four or five of the very large cities, not another 
in the United States receives in the course of a year a 
larger number of letters patent than this inland town of 
forty thousand souls. The genius of the place seems in- 
spired for the mission of the arts. The mind of the popu- 
lation seems aroused and exalted in the pursuit of the 
greatest attainable improvement in the condition of man- 
kind. 

Now, Mr. President, we have only to take the modern situ- 
ation as we find it, — a people " pushing things," as the phrase 
now is, not so much by arms, as by arts, — carrying their 
conquests over the globe by their wits, — and to aj)ply our- 



192 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

selves to the duties of furnishing the best education which 
this popular condition requires. We have reached a definite 
and established status, as a Commonwealth, for which specific 
policies and adaptations of education must be amply pro- 
vided. And this work of public obligation has only begun. 
In the five chartered literary colleges of the State there are, 
I suppose, some ten or twelve hundred students. But with 
the exception of very few who will take to engineering 
scarcely any of this large number will apply and continue 
their study and culture in those pursuits to which I have 
alluded, and which constitute the texture and fabric of our 
social organization and power. Tlie two institutions, which 
I have before mentioned, are instructing probably less than 
two hundred and fifty of our young men. The school which 
we dedicate to-day ought speedily to double this number. 
The want is imminent. The condition which has produced 
the want has been advancing upon us with rapid stride dur- 
ing the last thirty years. The whole social organism, all the 
forces and activities, the spirit of our age, the life of the 
State, are flowing in channels which, a generation ago, were 
too feeble to awaken the public attention. But it is so no 
longer. The directors and masters of education, the patrons 
and benefactors of our time, have been aroused to an appre- 
ciation of the necessity. That wliich is needed is not an 
underestimating or depreciation of the schools of classical 
learning. Theses and addresses have been paljlished in the 
last few years which have discussed the benefits received 
from the colleges in a manner most unwise and unfair. And 
in my judgment he is not in proper accord with the temper 
of this era, any more than with the temper of the past, who 
misleads the intelligence of the people by teaching them to 
undervalue the higher seminaries of classical learning. They 
will still live and prosper, and enrich the parish, the town, 
the halls of justice and legislation, all the circles of life and 
all the classes of mankind, with their myriad-shaded attain- 
ment and culture, their rich and exalted thought drawn from 



BEFORE THE FREE INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE. 193 

the treasuries of past centuries, their flexible taste, their re- 
fined sentiment, their trained virtue, and their imperishable 
religion. Let no man assail the colleges of Massachusetts. 
Their field is the world. But there is quite as much space 
left for the schools of industrial and physical science as they 
can occupy. We must maintain them beside and in addi- 
tion to the others ; we must support them for the specialties 
of our active, producing, consuming civilization. In sym- 
pathy with the objects of those other seminaries they should 
have in common with the others the base of the same Chris- 
tian religion which has upheld them ; the same patriotic tone 
and purpose ; the same elementary studies which precede and 
prepare for the classification of men in the various occupa- 
tions of life. Beyond these things, they are designed to 
educate — in the literal signification of that word, to lead 
forth, to bring out — the inventive genius of our young men. 
From the great invention of James Watt, which has changed 
the whole face of society, down through the long line of 
inventions now innumerable but all working together in the 
vast complication of the world's industry, you find compara- 
tively few which have proceeded from the sons of univer- 
sities. They have cropped out from humble cottages and 
secluded garrets. There have been in times past no schools 
for this class of producers and benefactors. Here we have 
the school at length ; and all around us, in the midst of us, 
we have the material for crowding its seats. In the appli- 
cation of elementary mathematics to practical art ; in the 
broad department of design and drawing ; in facilities for en- 
abling the student to seize each happy thought as it crosses 
his imagination, and to chain it in captivity by his own 
senses and by the agencies of fire, steam, electricity, and all 
the metals which minister in his hands ; in mutual compari- 
sons and suggestions among kindred minds laboring side by 
side in the common workshop of nature ; in the stimulation 
which shall here be communicated to the illimitable capacity 
of the mind, for modifying, improving, enlarging, intensifying 

13 



194 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

all discoveries yet made in the realm of utilized skill and 
art ; in sending forth, one after another, great and small, new- 
forms and combinations which shall facilitate and cheapen 
the ways of life, from the work of the engine that traverses 
the sea, or keeps a thousand men and women at work under 
a single roof, to the humblest cooking of a cottage dinner ; in 
simplifying and saving labor by devising new modes of 
dividing it ; in pointing out new uses of economy in the 
working operations of the mechanical forces, wasting less and 
consuming less without profit ; in producing the most benign 
effects on the moral and social relations by material means, 
raising the standard of comfortable living, increasing the 
quantity of leisure time for mental improvement, and pro- 
moting the progress of man in all the fields of earthly 
service and enjoyment, — this school and its associate schools 
shall contribute their part in perpetuating for our Common- 
wealth the respect and blessing of all wherever freedom and 
intelligence exist. And I deem it a privilege to be permitted 
to unite with you in committing it to its work, and in com- 
mending it to the patronage of our fellow-citizens and to the 
favor of Divine Providence. 



SPEECH 

AT A DINNEE GIVEN TO GENERAL DIX, UNITED STATES MINISTER TO FRANCE, 
BY AMERICANS AT PARIS, IN 1869. 

Mr. President, — It seems scarcely less than a superflu- 
ity that anything should be added to the striking and felici- 
tous remarks which have already expressed our purpose and 
crowned the occasion. And yet there is nothing superfluous, 
after all, in saying once more before we separate how largely 
our countryman and friend, the late Minister, takes with liim, 
as he sets his face towards home, the absolute respect and 
esteem of all Americans whether resident or transient on this 
side of the ocean. And certainly this is a free-will offering, 
which never was more justly merited by any one. To that 
executive capacity and straightforwardness which marked his 
labors in this as in every former field in which we have 
known him, in the discharge of his duties at this capital he 
has added a patience, courtesy, and kindness towards his 
many countrymen visiting here, which I am sure they are all 
ready to place high among the diplomatic virtues. I doubt 
not you will indulge me in one other remark in relation to 
this gentleman, — involving some delicacy indeed when ut- 
tered in his presence, but quite fit to be introduced in the 
general survey of his character which we are entitled to take 
at this moment. For myself, the respect for General Dix, 
which has brought me to this table, is not by any means 
diminished by what I believe to be the fact, — a fact possibly 
a little more rare now than at some former periods among 
public men, — that he retires from a prominent official life 



196 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

of twenty-five years with the power safely to challenge the 
closest scrutiny of his conduct and without having added to 
his private fortune. When such men quit the public service 
they leave the country greatly in debt to them. 

To an assemblage like the present, — comprising Ameri- 
cans who represent the several characteristic occupations, 
ranging all the way between those who are stationed here in 
fixed commercial relations and the greater number who are 
here for a longer or sliorter period in pursuit of general 
knowledge and recreation, — a portion having taken on some- 
what the complexion of this local sky, while others feel pass- 
ing over their cheeks only the color of the sky they recently 
parted from at home, — but all Americans still, with hearts 
beating true to the anthem of their country and eyes rekind- 
ling at every fresh instance of her progress and glory, — to 
you and me, one and all, it is gratifying to believe, against 
every idle rumor from whatsoever quarter it may come, that 
we sit this evening in the shade of a cordial and compacted 
concord between France and the United States. There are 
historical reasons why the Emperor and the President should 
be thoughtful of the present hour. This is to both countries 
a centennial era. It is not far from this time an hundred 
years since the lilies of France were borne on many a field 
of ours to a conquest which gave to us also an independent 
flag. In all this lapse of time, through the successive dy- 
nasties and administrations, between the land of Lafayette 
and the land of Washington, that ensign which the two won 
together has not been ruffled by a serious adversity. What- 
ever evil might once or twice have happened, and whatever 
evil some persons would have had happen, none has actually 
occurred. Nor is any likely to occur. No people have better 
reason than the French to respect the history of the Great 
Eepublic, and none can better afford in interest and senti- 
ment to welcome the fact that this history has no steps 
backward to take, — that the North American Union is at 
length complete, and that the name of its President is itself 



SPEECH AT A DINNER GIVEN TO GENERAL DIX. 197 

a flag. Then the comiuerce of the two countries has been 
and must continue to be a perpetual peace-maker and peace- 
preserver. Nor can I deem it frivolous or merely senti- 
mental to speak of a pending event as fit to become another 
guaranty of enduring friendship. Before the most rapid of 
our tourists now here shall find their way back to New York 
or Boston, we may expect that the ship, at present taking on 
board its freight in a French port, shall carry to our shore the 
only cable actually joining Europe with the United States. 
And you will pardon me if with a local pride I take to heart 
what I have read during my present stay in Paris, the act of 
the government of my State of Massachusetts — the only 
sovereignty that could confer the boon — granting the right 
to land this electric messenger of commerce and amity upon 
the coast of Cape Cod ; by the same waters which two hun- 
dred and fifty years back furnished anchorage to that famous 
little bark that bore in its cabin the Constitution of the 
future Kepublic. Most assuredly, Mr. President, in these 
passages of history, in these august events, — in the steadfast 
union of the king of that early day with our own Wash- 
ington, in the uninterrupted friendship between both coun- 
tries during a century, in the forthcoming last act which 
is to impress upon the very earth beneath the ocean the 
signet seal of assurance for a common fraternity in the 
future, — in these three, I am justified in finding that real 
triiolc alliance, of which the newspapers in the recent dis- 
play of their prolific ingenuity have not even given us the 
mention. 

Gentlemen, it must at times have seemed to you, as it has 
to me, that here, far away from home, and removed from par- 
ticipation in the events and excitements transpiring there, an 
American citizen may perceive in even more clear and con- 
spicuous light the proportions of his country without exag- 
geration and without diminution. "While we remained there 
we ourselves were actors, and our senses partook of the con- 
fusion of the scenes. But the transparent medium of distance 



198 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

presents to our sight the whole grand picture, correctly limned, 
free from the illusion of coloring, and without shackles upon 
the outline. Accordingly, to no portion of our country- 
men do the historical stages and growths and achievements 
of their nation appear more sensibly or more impressively 
than to those of them who are in foreign lands. Here quite 
impartially you apprehend in the fulness of its meaning, and 
seize, in your pride and affection, that recent lesson of a na- 
tional unity now for the first time achieved and established 
beyond every possibility of disruption in the ages to come. 
All the antagonisms which had accumulated for a century, 
all the oppositions of sections and climates and products, all 
the diversities of histories and races, which from the begin- 
ning had imperilled the existence of a common central sover- 
eignty, have been welded by the flames of war into one bond 
of paternal strength, which belts the continent, makes it in- 
dissoluble from vices within, and makes it invincible to forces 
from abroad. No person can realize better than you that 
there is not an American merchant upon this eastern liemi- 
sphere, — in London, Paris, St. Petersburg, on either side of 
the Cape of Good Hope, — who does not now feel, as he could 
never feel before, that he represents a Government which is 
capable of protecting him. Having proved sufficient to main- 
tain its own integrity in the severest of recorded struggles, it 
may henceforth be considered able to defend the honor and 
rights of its citizens in every part of the globe. If twenty- 
five millions, not without some division among themselves, 
could levy and subsist and animate the recent armies, to 
which there has been no parallel in modern annals, it is not 
difficult to say what forty millions would accomplish with 
one heart and one mind pervading the whole area from cen- 
tre to circumference. Let t;s trust that the day is far distant 
when such power will be summoned to the requisition. There 
is exemption from arms in the existence of power. The aim 
of our country is humanity ; and therefore it is progress. Its 
end is justice, — in due time and at all hazards justice to 



SPEECH AT A DINNER GIVEN TO GENERAL DIX. 199 

itself and justice to its citizens ; and therefore it will be 
peace. 

I should be incomplete in my appreciation of the spirit of 
patriotic congratulation which jjervades this convention of 
Americans, if I should not unite with you in hailing a late 
event in our country as the last decisive harbinger of com- 
merce and empire. Hitherto the geographical features of our 
territory have been in some particulars against us. Moun- 
tain ridges have stood in the way of commercial unity. For 
thirty-five years we have by railroad communication over- 
come these obstacles, one after another, until only a single 
field of separation remained closed to the rapid exchange of 
the agencies of civilization between tlie Atlantic and the 
Pacific States. Now at length, almost in an unexpected 
hour, brain and muscle have conquered geography, the civil 
engineer has suddenly become master of the situation, and 
the song of Bishop Berkeley is repeated by electric lieat in 
one and the same moment of civic ovation at New York and 
San Francisco. It was formerly a custom at Venice to sol- 
emnize the espousal of the city with the Adriatic by impos- 
ing ceremonies in which the Doge and the Court participated. 
How transcendently surpassing that was the late simple and 
sublime bridal of the Atlantic and the Pacific, celebrated mid- 
way in the heart of our continent ! Or rather perhaps I should 
more properly say, it was not so much an espousal as it was 
a national coronation. California and Arizona and Nevada 
bore the mace of silver and gold before the Queen of Nations 
receiving her imperial crown ; receiving it not from the hands 
of bristling soldiery, but from the arm of the engineer and the 
laborer, all the hosts of agiiculture, commerce, and the arts, 
in the towns and upon the prairies, catching at the same in- 
stant the signal of the new era and re-echoing it from ocean 
to ocean. The great work is done, and hereafter the States 
are a unit in commerce as in government. Before my friend, 
Mr. Burlingame, has half completed his cosmopolitan mis- 
sion, the freight trains have been made up at San Francisco 



200 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

laden with the product of China ; and by the time he shall 
have unpacked his trunks at Berlin, he may drink at the 
breakfast-table his favorite tea, which, thanks to the irrepres- 
sible and irresistible Yankees, has been brought round to him 
the other way. All things are changed by these new comers 
upon the world's arena. As in war there is no longer a pres- 
tige save to the strongest legions, so in the cultures of peace 
the fruits of success fall into the arms of those who get up 
earliest in the morning and carry the clearest heads and the 
most indomitable energy through the labors of the day. And 
that condition can only be fully attained in a country where 
the personal liberty of the individual man, free education and 
voluntary religion, a right to enjoy his conscience, his earn- 
ings, and an unrestricted, unmolested suffrage in the choice of 
his rulers, expands his soul, exhilarates his life, and moves 
him to enterprise, adventure, and independence. We may 
M'^ell rejoice that such is the opportunity and the fortune of 
every citizen of the United States, and that our country 
enjoys a corresponding result to the sisterhood of nations. 
Whatever attractions other countries may present to us, 
whatever objects of interest to the senses, whatever to be 
studied and admired, these in due time pale before the larger 
conception of national justice, freedom, and power, and the 
dust of our native land becomes dearer to us than all other 
lands beside. 

Gentlemen, it is the spontaneous impulse of my heart to 
say a word to you about the honorable gentleman who suc- 
ceeds General Dix as our national representative at the Im- 
perial Court. My own acquaintance with Mr. Washburne 
probably antedates that which any one of you can recall. It 
happened that thirty years ago the next autumn we occupied 
rooms side by side as students at law in the University at 
Cambridge. Following his profession in another section of 
the Union, he has engrafted upon the education of the East 
the stout and manly qualities of the West. He brings to 
his high mission the teachings of Story, enriched by a large 



SPEECH AT A DINNER GIVEN TO GENERAL DIX. 201 

experience in public life. These will stand by him and sup- 
port him, as upon every occasion he will stand by and support 
his country. Having the confidence of the President and the 
people, he has already received yours fully in advance, and I 
could not refrain from uniting my feeble but cordial tribute 
with the common testimonial. 



DEDICATION OF THE SOLDIEES' MONUMENT 

AT WORCESTER, JULY 15, 1874. 

I CAN neither enlarge nor diminish the lesson of the hour 
inscribed upon the column before us. We have assembled to 
witness the erection of a monument by the people of Wor- 
cester to the memory of her sons who died for the union of 
the States. Some memorial, fitting in design and durable in 
substance, which should perpetuate the names of the four 
hundred citizens fallen for their country, and in association 
with them pay respect to the larger number of survivors who 
shared in the same military service, is not only an appropriate 
offering, but an absolute necessity from our human condition. 
The sense of gratitude may be trusted so long as memory is 
fresh or tradition is actively repeated, but these are of uncer- 
tain duration, and the time of forgetfulness comes only too 
soon and unawares. The necessary thing is some visible me- 
morial, without which a haze of indifference quickly gathers 
over virtuous deeds, and the names of modest heroes are 
untimely lost. We readily believe with Cicero that but for 
the " Iliad " the same grave which held the body of Achilles 
would also have entombed his name. But the historian poet 
never comes to commemorate the names of the great body of 
a nation's soldiery, though its existence was preserved by 
their blood. Already a large part of this present assembly 
is in need of this monument for monitor and instructor. 
Some of us indeed remember the first general war meeting 
held here for half a century, — on the 16th of April, 1861, — 



DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MONUMENT AT WOKCESTER. 203 

which witnessed the fusion of all religions, all politics, all 
nationalities, under one common sense of wrong and one 
common purpose of vindication ; but that was more than 
thirteen years ago, almost half the time by which we measure 
a transitory generation, and the young men of twenty-one 
to-day, who were then schoolboys on the grammar form, are 
now learning, as students, that mighty series of events into 
which these soldiers were then enlisting, as actors. Whilst, 
therefore, we stand around this majestic structure with varied 
reflections, — of approbation for the harmonious effect with 
which the eminent artist has made each part tributary to the 
whole work, his statues and embossments merging from their 
several quarters into civic and martial union beneath the 
column culminating in benignant victory, — of a certain justi- 
fiable complacency for the unanimity with which the city has 
voted this token of its own public spirit, — of grateful wel- 
come to these remustering ranks of the survivors, privates 
who were companions and oflicers who were leaders of the 
noble dead, — in high supremacy over all these thoughts our 
gaze passes and fixes upon the names of those translated, and 
our heart returns to the consciousness that this is their me- 
morial, its first and last object to transmit their names and 
their deeds to a remote posterity. 

The story of the city in the late conflict is the history of 
the town of earlier days re-enacted on a larger scale and on 
wider fields. In free and brave communities, kept up to the 
measure of tlieir fathers by a chivalrous standard of patriotic 
duty, the inheritance of good blood and inspiring traditions 
counts for an increasing degree of glory, each generation not 
only retaining but augmenting the vigor of their ancestors. 
That truth has been displayed in the public conduct of the 
people of this town in five historical wars, covering, wdth 
greater or less intervals, the period of one hundred and twenty- 
five years. It is a century since Lord Chatham, whose name 
will ever be held sacred by the freemen of Massachusetts, 
declared in the House of Peers, with a pride surpassing the 



204 ADDEESSES OF ALEXANDER H, BULLOCK. 

pride of argument, that the inhabitants of New England had 
raised, on their own bottom, four regiments and taken Louis- 
burg from the veteran troops of France. This provincial 
town, then scarcely advanced more than twenty years in its 
chartered existence, was represented by its full quota in those 
regiments under Sir William Pepperell, and carried into that 
siege names which are still borne by some of our present 
townsmen, and are thus associated with the victory celebrated 
by the elder Pitt. The scenes of resolve and preparation, 
which were witnessed here in 1861, were the enlarged spec- 
tacle of the century preceding ; and the same plains that were 
covered with the gathering troops of our day had whitened 
with the tents of our fathers under beat of the drums of the 
seven years' war, from 1756 to 1763. They awoke at that 
time from a brief rest on their arms to actions from which 
Great Britain bore away imperial renown, and our ancestors 
the gloom of a depleted population and the transcendent 
lessons that fitted them for independence. The Worcester 
men moved everywhere in that war, — they were at Crown 
Point and Fort William Henry, they were in captivity at 
Montreal and in the epidemics of Lake George, they shared 
with the ill-fated Abercrombie in the defeat of Ticonderoga 
and with General Amherst in the joy of triumph. It is not 
easy for the fifty thousand inhabitants of the present day to 
understand it, yet the recorded rolls declare it, that the rugged 
stock of our predecessors sent more than live hundred men 
into the campaigns of the ten years ending with 1756, out of 
a population not averaging through that period more than 
fourteen hundred. That character heroic, pervading the spirit- 
ual frame of the age and working in acts of valor in the field, 
held the town among the foremost twelve years afterwards, 
and bore its citizens in triumph through another and severer 
struggle of seven years' duration. When the alarm messenger 
shouted on the green where we are now assembled the cry of 
blood from Lexington, at noon, on the 19th of April, 1775, 
his voice fell upon a people already prepared by experience 



DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MONUMENT AT WORCESTER. 205 

and sacrifice, by long training of arms and by inherited train- 
ing of the spirit, at a minute's warning to strike the blows for 
independence ; and scarcely had cannon and bells ceased to 
reverberate over these hills when two companies of one hun- 
dred and ten men were on their way for Concord and Boston. 
It was the tale of previous days. They marched out with the 
blessing of the same pulpit which rang with its manly counsel 
ten years before ; they bore the discipline and daring of the 
Eangers of the French war; they stepped to the same fife and 
drum which had sounded under the walls of Louisburg. I 
will not overtax your patience with the story of Worcester in 
the Eevolution. Happily, we consecrate this monument by 
the side of another,^ which, while it commemorates the long- 
suffering heroism of a distinguished soldier of the Eevolution, 
commemorates as well the whole part which this town bore 
in that war, from the first baptism in Middlesex to the final 
coronation of virtue at Yorktown. Of what kind, in service 
and sacrifice, that marble tells. He filled his regiment here, 
the stout old Fifteenth of the Massachusetts line in the Con- 
tinental, known and impressed upon history by their inefface- 
able footsteps at Saratoga, in Ehode Island, at Verplanck's 
Point, at Peekskill, at Valley Forge, — a band whose conduct 
in close, hot places was worthy of the stern commentary of 
Napier or Cffisar, descended long since to the grave of our 
common lot, but after the lapse of two generations represented 
again as if in reinvested life and repeated glory under the 
colors of the Massachusetts Fifteenth of 1861. Example is 
the school of mankind. 

On the morning of the 15th of April, 1861, the entire city 
was awakened by the intelligence that, under the first blow 
struck for disunion, the flag of the United States had been 
dishonored, and before nightfall the murmur of the armories 
and the common speech of all told of but one mind and one 
purpose. In a day we had all become republicans, we had 
all become democrats. The annals of that first week, its 

1 The nionuinent to Colonel Timothy Bigelow. 



206 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

transfusion of heart to heart, its enthusiasm toned to solemn 
cahn, its days and nights of ceaseless preparation, will supply 
a priceless inheritance in any future national exigency. The 
Light Infantry, first off and first at the capital, the City 
Guards and the Emmet Guards quickly following, filled the 
requisition for three hundred within five days from the first 
peal of the tocsin ; and the next Sabbath after the fall of 
Sumter witnessed that, by the -departure of its first conse- 
crated band, the city had not only met its present duty, but 
had covenanted for every future requirement. 

I advert again to the prompt enUstment of the Emmet 
Guards, because, in my judgment, it was a representative fact 
of the highest importance to the permanent character of our 
Government. This company was, I believe, the first organi- 
zation of foreign blood which marched into the war, though 
it was followed by others of various nationalities, all of which 
rendered cordial service unto the end by the side of the patri- 
otic native-born of the land. It is not any new boast that, in 
the last seventy-five years, we have drawn to our shores dis- 
cordant elements from half the globe, and magnetized the 
mass with the electric spark of civil freedom ; but this is the 
first proof and illustration, on a national scale, that all dis- 
tinctions of blood sink before the American flag, and that in 
the hour of extreme peril unity of action receives special 
guaranty and strength from diversities of origin. It would 
be impossible for me within my limitations to attempt anj^ 
narrative of the subsequent organization here of companies 
and regiments of which the stirring recollections have scarcely 
yet subsided. Fortunately the whole of this history has been 
collated and published with honorable industry and impar- 
tiality in a memorial volume,^ which the present generation 
cannot afford to neglect, and which will surely be appreciated 
by the next as having a great and rare value. 

It is not possible that I should state the number of men 
who served as soldiers of the city. In this search I find a 
1 History of "Worcester in the War, by A. P. Marvin. 



DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MONUMENT AT WORCESTER. 207 

catalogue of their names dislocated and confused by the 
repeated enlistment of the same individuals in different regi- 
ments ; but I estimate their whole number as not far from 
three thousand. You are to bear in mind also that a very 
large number of our citizens did service in the lines of other 
States. Many of our own are thus lost to our recognition, 
save when in individual instances a conspicuous action or a 
conspicuous death dissolves the mystery, and brings back the 
name of a distant son for memorial honors at home. The 
records of Massachusetts volunteers officially show that the 
men of Worcester served under the colors of fifty distinct 
regiments of infantry, five regiments of cavalry, and fourteen 
regimental or battery organizations of artillery, all sent into 
the field with the commission of John A. Andrew, whose 
name as the great war-governor of Massachusetts will forever 
be associated with the immortal renown of her soldiers. Our 
eye detects amongst the inscriptions upon this monument the 
names of our sons fallen under the banners of seventeen 
regiments of our sister States and nine military organizations 
of the General Government. Estimating the probabilities of 
the number of our own enlisted by the ascertained number 
of our own dead in regiments without the State, though we 
can reach no definite result, we know enough to be able to 
say for a truth that the blood of Worcester was offered for 
the defence of the Government in more than one hundred 
regiments and under the flag of every loyal State. Marvel- 
lous touchstone for us all that conflict was ! Between our- 
selves and some of the States of the Centre and the West 
there had been for several years more or less of political and 
social difference, with a plenty of misapprehension and ill 
blood all round ; but when the common test came to all, how 
blessed the reunion in which they stood together and learned 
mutual respect under the same flag of stars ! 

A sense of repletion of material comes over me when I 
contemplate the extent and number of the fields wliich re- 
sounded with the tread of your soldiers. Not a page, but a 



208 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

volume, would furnish the recital. They shared in the shift- 
ing lot of the army of the Potomac, from its clouded morning 
to its brilliant close, in the marchings and fightings of the 
Shenandoah, till every open field and copse became familiar 
ground ; in the early welcome victories of Carolina ; in pa- 
tient trials along the Gulf; in the hours of turning fortune 
at New Orleans, Port Hudson, and Vicksburg ; in the tangled 
marches and counter-marches of Tennessee ; in every part 
of the country, in every great campaign, not excepting the 
Napoleonic excursion of Sherman to the sea. It would es- 
pecially be my pleasing duty, if time would permit, to make 
particular mention of the deeds of the Worcester regiments, 
so called, city and county, and of a few others in which a 
considerable proportion of our citizens enlisted, in whose 
personnel you became by observation and contact so deeply 
interested. I will not, indeed, omit to give voice to the 
opinion, to wdiich the ofl&cial testimony of so many of the 
higher officers of the army converges, that in labors and ac- 
tions performed, and in the manner of performing them, they 
ranked among the most illustrious of the war. You will 
permit me to go one step further on simply my own author- 
ity, for I take it there are some things in war, as in peace, 
which the common sense of a layman as well as a soldier can 
penetrate. I read the campaigns of the Spanish Peninsula, 
so often resorted to as a standard in military comparison, and 
I read the most approved descriptive accounts of the service 
of these regiments of our own ; I allow for some exaggeration 
in all the cases, and the farther back in the past they are, the 
greater this allowance should be ; and I declare the convic- 
tion, which every intelligent man is capable of forming, that 
for the moral and military qualities of a manly heroism, for 
versatile labors, for marches, for trials, for tough fighting, and 
for sublime endurance, laurel wreaths should fall around the 
shaft now rising before us, as profusely as Fame has ever 
strewn her honors over the memory of Talavera or Salamanca. 
Throughout the hostilities it was a common complaint of the 



DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS* MONUMENT AT WORCESTER. 209 

English critics that many of our battles were inconclusive. 
We then thouglit that we knew something of the reason for 
this, and military writers across the water are now confessing 
that they understand it as well. Conspicuously a writer of 
high authority in the profession of arms, an officer of the 
British army,^ who, in a recent volume, accounting for what 
he terms the "inconclusiveness" of our own engagements, 
very justly says that "the beaten side would not break up;" 
and then goes on remarking that " in order to pursue, there 
must be some one to run away, and to the credit of Ameri- 
cans, the ordinary conditions of European warfare in this 
respect were usually absent from the great battles fought [ in 
the United States]." I dare say that those who have re- 
turned from the war will appreciate the compliment, no 
doubt a just one, to the valor of both sides in our struggle. 
It is nothing very new as a discovery. The great Conde, 
when asked why he did not take Marshal Turenne, since he 
often came very near to him, replied, J'ai peur quil ne me 
prenne, — "I am afraid that he will take me." The fields of 
American valor are in every State, and on both sides of the 
cause, and the regiments which are largely represented in 
yonder engraved list of the dead would by any tribunal of 
comparison be awarded some of the highest of historical 
honors. 

But we are not just if we measure the merit of these lives 
by battles alone. There was no hard detail of labor that they 
were not equal to, no patient and cheerless sacrifice they did 
ijot endure, no vicissitude of prosperous or adverse fortune 
they did not meet with serenity. my friends, you may well 
believe that there is much of a soldier's life which is harder 
than a soldier's death ! Consider the tedium and tiredness 
of preparation for action deferred, the nervous strain from 
constant vigil at patrol and picket, the extreme of human 
wretchedness which comes from hunger, — " two ears of corn a 

1 Colonel Chesney's "Essays in Military Biography," reprinted from the 
"Edinburgh Review." 

14 



210 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK 

day's ration " in one of our regiments, " six spoonfuls of flour 
for seven clays " in another, — consider the marching for 
objects unknown to the ranks, and therefore all the harder to 
endure, under the intensity of our sky, summer or winter, 
until the very heavens seem animate with cruel hostility, 
" over one thousand miles in the hottest season [the Thirty- 
fourth], " " marching without rations under a Mississippi sun 
until some dropped dead in the ranks [the Thirty-sixtli]," 
" marching, watching, starving, and fighting in the mazes of 
Tennessee [the Twenty-first]," — consider the dreariness of 
exhaustion which steals over the senses like the forecasting 
shadows of dissolution, the days and nights so lengthened out 
in sickness, the solemn and awful rest of captivity, the horrors 
of prison, whence too often the cry of sacred misery rises to 
Heaven, and where the Almiglity sometimes abandons man 
to the display of his capacity for depravity, — and tell me 
whether you might not have preferred far rather the quick 
parting of soul and body in the waters at Ball's Bluff, amidst 
the transfiguration of victory on Lookout Mountain, in the 
battles of the Wilderness, that labyrinth of quick-passing fury 
and quick-coming glory. 

In the erection of this monument we symbolize alike the 
character of the war and the character of those who enframed 
in it. Several years ago a gentleman of military authority in 
England aroused a warm discussion by the assertion that a 
villain makes none the worse soldier. That might be true 
in a single instance, under a transitory passion for plunder or 
booty ; but no sustained spirit of fortitude, such as carries a 
people through the changing tides of a long war, can be 
counted on, unless the merit of the war itself be high enough 
to enlist in it high personal characters. " A war," says ]\Ir. 
Burke, — "a war to preserve national independence, liberty, 
life, and honor, is a war just, necessary, manly, and pious, and 
we are bound to persevere in it by every principle, divine and 
human, as long as the system which menaces them has an ex- 
istence." That was precisely our case ; and our fellow-citizens, 



DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MONUMENT AT WORCESTER. 211 

looking at it with as fair and impartial an eye as was 
ever united to a feeling heart, resolved to settle the question 
at once and for all time, at whatever cost and sacrifice the 
struggle should find necessary. They left happy firesides for 
the cheerless camp, misled by none of the illusive glare of 
romance nor any passing gust of madness, but thoroughly 
convinced that the government their fathers had established 
was now on its test and trial, and that the blood of man must 
be shed to redeem the blood of man. Men who would have 
looked upon any other war of the present century as vanity 
or as crime, carried their hearts and their arms impetuously 
into this. In the essential quality that marks great exemplars 
of patriotic virtue they were as superior to the heroes of 
Marathon, one-tenth part of whom were slaves let loose to 
fight the battles of their masters, as the civil polity of New 
England transcends the imperfect civilization of Greece or 
Rome. They were citizen-heroes, bearing in one hand the 
musket, and in the other the violated Constitution of their 
country, fully determined and sworn, the Lord helping them, 
to carry the former to the land's end, if need be, to restore 
the latter to acknowledged supremacy over every inch of 
territory which had ever taken the national christening. I 
alloM' they were backed by tremendous forces from behind, — 
teeming industries, generous wealth, tlie sympathetic support 
of women, the most active that any age had witnessed ; but 
they had a greater backing than these, — principles descended 
to them in the high phrase of Milton, endeared to them 
through the depth and pathos of colonial and revolutionary 
traditions, sounding tlirough their hearts in the undying 
words of Adams and Warren, of Webster and Sumner. In 
sending such men into the field you sent out armed doctrines 
which were invulnerable and immortal, — 

" Spirits that live throughout, 
Vital in every part, not as frail man," 

and wherever or in whatsoever numbers their mortal repre- 



212 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

sentatives sliould fall, the imperishable principle was certain 
to reappear in other champions on the field, until the wrong 
should be forever vanquished. 

And who were the three thousand that went out from the 
city to bear aloft such a standard in such a cause ? For the 
most part they were the young men of the day, the flower of 
the city's manhood. " Youth is genius," says Disraeli. Un- 
doubtedly youth is the stage of the ideal inspirations which 
play a most important part in every decisive revolution or 
social advancement. Not all age is sluggish, and not all 
youth is pure or progressive ; but human nature has its rules, 
and they are not disturbed by the exceptions. Advanced 
towards the grand climacteric, men are apt to become affec- 
tionately attached to the seasons of peace, in which they find 
accumulated profits and fixed pleasures better placed than in 
war. The dead level of civilization, the inertia of states, is 
best administered by the wisdom of the elders ; but when the 
great change conies, and obsolete or vicious institutions are 
to pass away by violence, as too often they must, younger 
men have to give and take the blows, though old ones may 
have to be called in again at the close to assist in the ad- 
justments. 

The first Pitt was comparatively but a young man when 
he set in motion the influences that drove the old councillors 
from around the throne, and in a short career, which reads 
like a romance of the imagination, bore with his own hand the 
flag of British conquest blazing with triumph over the two 
hemispheres. A few years later, with the gout settling over 
his body and the caprices of patrician dignity over his spirit, 
he made the remark, which is frequently and only partially 
quoted, that " confidence is a plant of slow growth in aged 
bosoms ; youth is the season for credulity." I accept the 
stately apothegm for the American situation. The young 
men of the United States had prepared the way for the con- 
test ; it was the product of their enthusiasm. It was to be a 
contest of desperation. In the fulness of time the day had 



DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MONUMENT AT WORCESTER. 213 

come when the Institution, so called, — the hoary monarch of 
our political system, who 

" Not content 
With fair equalit}', fraternal state, 
Did arrogate dominion undeserved 
Over his brethren," — 

was to be met in the last demand and on the last field, and 
all our habits of concession and surrender, confirmed and 
indurated for three generations, were to be upturned and re- 
versed, — the day of a social, elemental revolution, in which 
the proud master should retire forever from the scene, in 
which many of the relations of production and commerce 
were to be changed, and many of the old methods of business 
and politics were to be swept along like stubble before a wild 
northwester. 

And who could be best fitted to encounter such a situa- 
tion ? The sculptor, Mr. Rogers, — who, I may as well say 
to you, was true as steel to his country during all the war, 
a terror at Rome to every inflated refugee from home, — has 
placed before you the answer to my question. In full sym- 
pathy with his subject, he has symbolized each arm of the 
service in youthful figure, fashioned in a soldier's grace and 
strength, upon whose countenance sits the silent power of 
hope and faith, whilst over them all settles the indomitable 
will fitting their character and their cause. Nothing that is 
tricked, nothing that is theatrical or affected, lurks in these 
icieals. The artist has met the occasion. The young men 
who filled the rolls of that war must have been surcharged 
with tlie electric fire of enthusiasm, must have breathed in 
the atmosphere of a credulity which easily believes in heroic 
and revolutionary deeds, must have been so unhackneyed in 
the ways of age as from instinct to repel every suggestion 
of compromise, credulous enough to have an easy faith in the 
eternal union of the States, credulous enough to snuff eman- 
cipation in the air before it appeared to the sight, to behold 
high above the clouds of that desperate day the honor and 



214 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

renown which would come to those who should strike the 
chains from four millions of men and elevate them to the 
peerage of American citizensliip ; or the contest would have 
broken down in its second year. Such we saw them muster. 
From the shops, from the professions, from the churches, 
from the schools upon these surrounding highlands, they 
came with the dew of youth upon their lips, and bravely 
were sworn in for freedom, for their country and their God. 
O my fellow-citizens, those were historical hours ! The ex- 
ample of past generations tingled in their veins, and forgotten 
histories reappeared in those new young lives. The descen- 
dant of one who, ninety years before, had stood with his 
musket in tlie first company of martyrs at Lexington, broke 
away from the peace of home to complete the work of his 
ancestor, and laid down his life in the far-off prison which 
horror forbids me to mention. How true it is, as formulated 
by Bolingbroke, that " the virtue of one generation is trans- 
fused by the magic of example into several generations." I 
recall the young citizen of foreign blood, hereditary from 
Waterloo, who came forward in that first enlistment to match 
the gallantry of his sire, and fell to his sleep at Cold Harbor, 
asking that his face might be turned to the enemy and the 
banner of stars be held over his body in his dying moments. 
The whole war was unlike any other ; religion, poetry, and 
eloquence had prepared the way, and it came at length, 
stirring to their profoundest depths the ideal elements of 
national life ; a credulous pride and boast for the destiny of 
the flag ; rich veins of sentiment never so quickened before ; 
conceptions of freedom such as can flame only in the heart 
fresh from the studies of boyhood, and unchecked by the 
cooler calculations of advanced years. 

As we unveil the statues of the army of the dead, our 
justice and gratitude fall short of our duty and desire if 
we fail to comprehend the results they achieved. All this 
to-day is an empty pageantry, if we catch not the lesson 
of the occasion. I take that lesson from the enfjraved en- 



DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MONUMENT AT WORCESTER. 215 

tablatures, where it will be read for ages to come ; — they 
achieved not only a conquest and a peace, but they estab- 
lished the unity of the republic. They accomplished some- 
thing more. It sometimes happens that war, that divinity 
as mysterious in action as tremendous in power, accom- 
plishes incidentally purposes not inferior to the original and 
principal object. " War never leaves where it found a na- 
tion.'" If peace had come from early surrender and not from 
final conquest, from the first day at Bull Eun and not from 
the last day at Appomattox, then it would have been, in the 
language of Washington, " a peace of war." In the same' 
roar of battle in which the union of States was sealed to per- 
petual life, the Constitution gained its just and final inter- 
pretation, without which any victory would have been only 
a transient joy. Very early after the opening of hostilities 
it became obvious, and by none more quickly discerned 
than by the ingenuous and independent volauteer, that the 
one thing absolutely essential for enduring union and peace 
was the acknowledgment of the equality of all, and their 
right to enfranchisement. The moral sense of the nation, 
which had become more keen by war, the alternations of the 
cause oscillating between victory and defeat, the talk of the 
volunteers about the camp fires, the judgment of the world, 
the visible tokens of the Divine will, combined to aggravate 
and heighten the demand for a completed republic under 
universal emancipation, and a homogeneous people under 
universal suffrage. And then, repose. It has come, but it 
could only have come after war. It needed the tramp of 
armies to break down the prejudices rooted by the vicious 
overgrowth of an hundred years and twining about the 
very body of the Constitution, We might as well suppose 
that after months of torrid heat and vapor, rolling vege- 
table life to a scroll, the God of nature would clear the 
atmosphere without the agency of electric sublimity and 
destruction, as believe that the current of national vice of 
a century could be changed, and the institutions grounded 



216 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

in the mercenary passions of many generations could be 
overturned, without the vicissitudes and agonies of pro- 
tracted war. 

Out of the war has come another reform in the interpreta- 
tion of the powers of the Government wliich never would 
have been won in peace. We have learned at last that the 
sovereignty of the nation is greater than the sovereignty of 
the States. We tried that question under the civil experience 
of eighty years withoiit reaching a settlement. The Eevolu- 
tion found us united, but only for a special purpose, and the 
Declaration of Independence, tliough grand as a war-cry, was 
by no means a bond of government. The Confederation which 
followed proved only a joint-stock association, liable to dis- 
solution at any moment, because it established no central 
power to raise revenue, or enforce a treaty, or compel a State. 
It was rich enough for individual liberty, but was poverty as 
a unit of sovereignty. It sprang out of provincialism, and 
came only to statism, and not to nationality. It was some- 
thing splendid as a stage of progress, but could be nothing as 
a consummation. Then, as a consequence, came the Consti- 
tution. Singularly enough, Madison, the champion of the 
Constitution, gave to his own work its first and worst con- 
struction of weakness in the Virginia resolutions of '98. 
Those resolutions, coupled since with African slavery, have 
been the cause of our war. When, long afterwards, Web- 
ster, in reply to Hayne, put forth the only construction 
under which this Union could live, Madison, then an old 
man, explained away the resolutions of '98 ; but it was too 
late, the mischief had begun its irresistible work. The same 
school of interpretation continued, and under the authority 
of its great master, Calhoun, it outlived the argument of 
Webster, the denunciation of Clay, the invective of Adams, 
and took its last animate form and articulate expres- 
sion in James Buchanan. In the expiring hours of his 
administration he led the way to the opening of war by 
promulgating to the world once more, and for the last time, 



DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS* MONUMENT AT WORCESTER. 217 

that the national sovereignty was powerless before the sover- 
eignty of the States ; and with these parting words he retired 
from the capitol to his eternal retreat. He closed the doors 
of the old school forever, and it only remained for Abraham 
Lincoln to open the doors of the new. 

And now, after all these years of the strife of opinions and 
of arms, we have come to the opportunity of gratitude for the 
establishment of the central authority of this Union, of the 
sovereignty of unity over its parts, of the oneness and inde- 
structibility of American nationality. This has been an open 
question before, and never could have been solved until the 
disputants at the South as well as at the North should ac- 
knowledge it to be solved ; and the ordeal of fire and blood 
alone could bring them to such acknowledgment. And that 
time has arrived. They who resisted the idea of the dominant 
authority of the federal principle by a war of words for seventy 
years, and by a war of arms for four years which seemed 
longer than the seventy before, are in substantial agreement 
with other sections in accepting this trial of battle as the 
finality. They have entered with us all upon reconstruction 
with acknowledgment of the establishment of federal author- 
ity ; disputed before but conceded at length ; claimed by 
Hamilton, but frittered quite away by Madison ; demonstrated 
by Webster, but surrendered by Buchanan ; established now, 
if anything can be said to be established, for all coming time 
by the hearts and by the arms of the people. Nothing exceeds 
in grandeur the settlement of this disputed question. It 
proves that the silence of the Constitution, which all over the 
world has been accounted its weakness, was destined under 
Providence to become its strength. Whatever shall be the 
number of States between the Atlantic and the Pacific, they 
shall live and govern under one common authority and under 
one common flag. 

Looking back to the events of the contest, we find there a 
new school for the national character. I am not afraid of 
seeming to touch upon the delicate ground of military glory. 



218 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

The renown of martial deeds is better than national decay. 
The necessity had become imminent and overshadowing for 
some fresh infusion in the sluggish and turbid current of the 
national spirit. Inglorious sloth was to be broken by virtuous 
activity. For half a century, with scarcely any interruption, 
we had been harvesting the fruits of prosperous peace, but 
we had also garnered into the treasury of the heart a large 
mixture of the noxious growths which spring up in a long 
period of social inertia. The atmosphere was heavy with the 
overspread and far-stretching vapors rising from the malarial 
luxuriance of the broad level of materialistic life, and the 
blast of war came to inspire, to change, and to purify. The 
politics and ambitions of the time were composed, so to speak, 
of two or three stratified periods of compromise and bargain, 
immutable principles exchanged for transient repose, when 
the war fell to startle the fallen virtue of the people to manly 
self-sacrifice and heroism. In such a change the whole nation 
became a school of honor, of noble aspirations, of exalted 
sentiments. The air grew fragrant with courage, decision, 
manliness, and rectitude, and a new generation rose stocked 
with exhilarating lessons and examples. You may deplore, 
you must deplore, the necessity of so terrible an agency of 
reformation, but you recognize in it the hand of the God of 
your fathers. If you ask in what sense moral and social good 
can come from these feats of arms, from the trials and suffer- 
ing of that dread ordeal, the answer is, — good in the very 
manifestation of greatness, of enterprise, of valor, of suffering ; 
good in the shape of bright and stimulating examples offered 
to the contemplation of the next generation. The line of 
uninterrupted uniformity connecting the ages of a nation may 
conduct to riches and contentment, but the danger is that it 
will become a contentment of mercenary and obtuse senti- 
ments even worse than the shock of martial magnetism. 
Certain it is that the Almighty has so dealt with us, and 
with all the other nations of modern power. 

Nor do I limit my estimate of the moral stimulation of the 



DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MONUMENT AT WORCESTER. 219 

late couflict to the rugged half of our population. In no less 
degree has it been a stimulating educator to the other sex, 
formed to gentle manners and trained to a merciful religion. 
No former generation, of Spartan or Eoman fame, has better 
illustrated the whole circle of grace and beneficence than the 
women of America throughout that dark and troubled period. 
Under all defeats and discouragements, not any utterance of 
doubt nor sign of dissension among the sterner sex, nor any 
degree of grief or sacrifice brought home to their own hearts, 
for a moment disturbed in the women of this country " the 
firm and settled purpose of their souls to undergo all and to 
do all that the meekest patience, the noblest resolution, and 
the highest trust in God could enable human beings to suffer 
or to perform." The moral and social heroism which the war 
called into activity, elevating men and women to higher 
sj)heres of thought and action than any they had moved in 
before, will live as examples during this generation and pass 
down among the traditions that shall instruct and animate 
the following. 

It seems to many of us as the consciousness of yesterday 
that bonfires and illuminations in all the land proclaimed 
that fraternal blood had ceased to flow; and yet even already 
the war has been consigned to history, and tlie era of restora- 
tion is completed. Pacification, reconciliation, meets with 
an all-embracing welcome in every section, in every State. 
Providence, in its benignant work, has outstripped the antici- 
pations of both sides. Unfriendly prophets in Europe have 
been disappointed, we ourselves have been disappointed, by 
the swiftly following reaction of all the better parts of human 
nature. Community of interest, fellowship, and blood, of 
strength, pride, and renown, has so quickly proved too mighty 
and too benevolent for the lingering memory of wrong and 
the lurking thought of retaliation. Since the first assembling 
of States at Pliiladelphia a century ago, there has been no 
such manifestation of the saving grace and power of nation- 
ality as that which now pervades this great people. Nor can 



220 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

the history of civil wars in other countries and other ages 
supply a parallel or a precedent to ours. 

Within fiv^e years after the shedding of blood one tone and 
purpose of renationalization courses like a river of peace 
throufjh all the States and churches, throuoh all the indus- 
tries and intercommunications, through all political and all 
social life. To-day the liighest policy of States lies in the 
broadest magnanimity, and the wisest statesmanship is for- 
getfulness and forgiveness. We have passed througli a pro- 
tracted period of war ; now let us take our hearts with us into 
a protracted period of fraternization. The voice of pacification 
cries to us from the ground. The earth is the common tomb 
of the war, the common resting-place of silence and reconcili- 
ation, where in the awful but kindly brotherhood of death 
the dust of warriors may commingle in peace. The living 
ought to learn peace from the dead. I am sure that we all 
concurred with the President of the United States in his 
recent declaration to Congress, that the last manifestation of 
sectional passion ought to be buried beneath a tolerant and 
statesmanly amnesty. The people of all the States, weary 
of war, weary of dissension, hail the dear old flag, never so 
dear before, as the assurance of a united nation and univer- 
sal peace. 

To those who fell we bring the votive offering of this 
passing hour. The recorded list is rich with memories of 
self-sacrificing patriotism and the immortal fame of dying for 
one's country. In reading and studying their names I have 
felt oppressed with a desire to make here and there some 
special mention ; but I have schooled myself to forbear, under 
a sense of justice forbidding me to lay a discriminating finger 
upon the sacred roll. Wherever they offered up their lives, 
amid the thunder of battle or on the exhausting march, in 
victory or in defeat, in hospital or in prison, offtcers and pri- 
vates, soldiers and patriots all, they fell like the beauty of 
Israel, on their high places, burying all distinction of rank in 
the august equality of death. In that same spirit of impartial 



DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MONUMENT AT WORCESTER. 221 

justice their names are engraved on the enduring bronze, 
where they will be read in after ages when tlie hands that 
reared the work, and the voices which now dedicate it, shall 
have passed away and been forgotten. The names of those 
who fell at Marathon, inscribed upon the pillars erected over 
the spot, were legible to more than twenty successive genera- 
tions ; and we may devoutly trust that these names of our 
sons, if obscured by time, will be restored by the pious hands 
of our successors, and will continue as long as the Union 
shall last, though it be a thousand years. Especially to you, 
surviving comrades of the conflict, who have assembled in 
such vast throng to participate in these fleeting ceremonies, 
we commit the keeping of this sacred trust, — to the army 
of the living the duty of protecting the honor of the army of 
the dead. 



INTELLECTUAL LEADERSHIP IN AMERICAN 
HISTORY. 

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE SOCIETY OF PHI BETA KAPPA, AT 
BROWN UNIVERSITY, PROVIDENCE, JUNE 15, 1875. 

Our theme should be fitting to the year of centennial an- 
niversaries, of which we are passing the threshold. It is 
apparent that the present and few succeeding years, recalling 
the days of our first declared nationality and the series of 
measures in the council and the field which gave success to 
the declaration, will become henceforth memorable for festal 
days. We are to have a time of competitive celebrations 
marked by liberal pageant in token of martial events, and 
the sensuous parts of our nature are likely to be worked to 
their capacity. Of all that which is to be commemorated 
the share most striking to the average every-day senses un- 
doubtedly comes from the narrative of arms, and it meets a 
responsive magnet in a people under whose sober side touches 
of military spirit have always found quick reception. They 
have inherited a taste of the soldier's life. Descended from 
ancestors who for more than one hundred years after cis- 
atlantic colonization were engaged in war or were every mo- 
ment exposed to it, summoned now by these thick-coming 
anniversaries to recite the annals of the field and to realize 
in their own quickened pulse the rapture of victory, we need 
not wonder that they seize upon methods of commemoration 
the most demonstrative, the most cognizable by the outward 
senses ; that they subordinate the oration to the spectacle ; 
that they 



INTELLECTUAL LEADERSHIP IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 223 

" Let the kettle to the trumpet speak, 
The trumpet to the cannoneer without, 
The cannons to the heavens, the heaven to earth." 

This is according to nature, this is Anglo-Saxon, this is 
American. But it belongs to an assembly of educated men 
to discharge the same duty in another mode of procedure. 
They penetrate beneath the surface of historical narrative, 
behind the scenery of battles, among the more subtile forces 
of our national development, which have been chief agencies 
in conducting us to the liigh situation from which the cele- 
brants may now deliver their pyrotechnics. 

We cannot pass in review from our own advanced position 
over the stirring Eevolutionary stage, over the broad and pic- 
turesque colonial period, back to the more serious era of the 
advent and settlement, and not pay tribute to the age which 
went before them all, out of which they sprung, a part of 
which they were — to the masters who directed the mind of 
England two centuries and a half ago, who came here in per- 
son and in representatives, whose association with our subse- 
quent history is immortal. Our epic, from the first embar- 
kation down to the last admission of a State, is especially 
interesting to the intelligent inquirer for the spiritualistic, 
the intellectual element which preceded and gave it birth, 
animated it in all its parts, supplied its actors with motive 
power, which has made it the story of a people sprung from 
the best race of men at the time of its matured strength, and 
advancing to a higher plane of civilization than that upon 
which it began. The heroic courage, the sorrow and suffer- 
ing, the adventure and enterprise which mark the century 
from 1660, when the colonies had acquired a fixed and homo- 
geneous condition, down to declared independence, which 
give to it in the reading the changing shades of serious 
annals and gay romance, were the natural flowering of 
the English mind under the training of an equal period 
preceding. 

The beginning of the American people was but the transfer 



224 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

to the transatlantic continent of an eclectic and adventurous 
portion of the English nation. These passing anniversaries 
carry us back indeed to stages of infancy as to numbers, as 
to material appointments and possessions, but in the higher 
forces of civilization, manhood, and culture there was here 
from the start the same maturity which crowned the English 
communities in the golden age of Elizabeth and her succes- 
sor. Whenever you contemplate what that maturity was, 
how broad in studied letters and statesmanship, in progres- 
sive science and art, and especially how it bore on its 
advancing crest the promise of deliverance from spiritual 
bondage, you are contemplating the actual state of the mind 
of the planters of this nation when they stepped from an old 
country to a new, only changing the scene of their life in the 
conflicts of their age. The spirit of Northern Europe was then 
for the first time in full activity under immense influences 
proceeding from the Reformation and the introduction of the 
art of printing. At Frankfort-on-the-Main the traveller walks 
from the public square, where the memorial group of bronze 
statues commemorates the introduction of printing, to the 
house in which Luther once lodged while in the flesh, feeling 
that he is venerating in authentic symbols the authors of a 
revolution of which the benefits have reached to every fire- 
side in Christendom. Slowly overcoming the sleep of the 
Northern communities, and moving with the Divine assurance 
which always accompanies every true reform, these resistless 
agencies at length imparted a stimulation to the mental hab- 
its of Great Britain which the successors of the Virgin Queen 
might check indeed but could not suppress. The publication 
of the results of maritime voyage and discovery on this con- 
tinent spread a glamour over the spirit of curious and daring 
men, which scarcely the sternest disappointment and disaster 
could dispel. The tide was rising to its flood at the opening 
of the seventeenth century. A higher poetry and philoso- 
phy, strange religious rhapsody and religious exploration, the 
lessons of ancient and heroic freedom brought out into allur- 



INTELLECTUAL LEADERSHIP IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 225 

ing light by the changed tastes and opportunities for the old 
languages, a wider education, another dispensation over the 
domain of practical science and invention, a new destiny for 
the aim of benevolence and philanthropy, wisdom of every 
degree, conceits of every kind, but in all and through all a 
paramount and aggressive progress lighted the modern world 
on its pathwa}^ For the next fifty years the air was exhil- 
arant with intellectual vitality. The genius of change pene- 
trated the palace, the closet, and the shop, and throughout 
the capital city of our race the vigil of night was kept faith- 
ful to the revolutionary studies. " God is decreeing," Milton 
said, " to begin some new and great period," and then, with 
quaint expression of the national self-consciousness which 
has never gone out of his countrymen from that day to this, 
he adds : — 

" What does God then but reveal himself, as his manner is, first 
to his Englishmeu 1 Behold now this vast city ; a city of refuge, 
the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded b}^ his 
protection ; the shop of war hath not there more anvils and ham- 
mers waking, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed 
jvistice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and 
hands there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, 
revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present as with 
their homage and their fealty the approaching reformation : others 
as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason 
and convincement." 

Such was that age ; and such was the strength of the 
American beoinnins. Out of that age and under that lead 
we came. Ours was not a transfusion of blood from one set 
of men into another ; nor an offshoot, nor an engraftment ; it 
was the removal of ripening English minds in English bodies 
into another country. During the fifty years of active emi- 
gration as good came here as were left behind. The early 
peopling of Virginia was by the average cavaliers of the day, 
under the direction of higher grades of intellect at tlieir lead, 
and there was soon present a large array of men of education, 

15 



226 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

property, and condition ; Maryland from the outset rose upon 
the shoulders of persons of high birth, moved to their destina- 
tion by the best thouglit at home ; the ships of Massachusetts 
brouo-ht here many of the choice sons of education, scholars 
in the languages, of culture the same that prevailed in Eng- 
land, not cosmic indeed as modern learning, for the old 
scholastic studies of the schoolmen then overlaid the univer- 
sal mind of Europe. The names of these intellectual leaders 
are too many and too familiar to need repeating ; they rise at 
every recurring thought of the earliest religious freedom of 
the world in Maryland, and of the most powerful republican 
theocracy of the world in Massachusetts. Then we ought to 
consider that these heads of the nascent provinces were in 
constant intercourse and contact with the best talent and 
wisdom of Europe, and that our separate colonial histories, 
down to the very day of independence, associate the new 
country and the old by ties which linked togetlier in personal 
relations the wise and great of both lands. Winthrop and 
Endicott, Cotton and Hooker, and their associated managers 
in the other provinces, brought with them and kept up after- 
wards acquaintance with the upper life on the other side. 
At one time or another, on this or the other side of the ocean, 
the heads of these provinces were in living familiarity with 
the high discussions and high disputants under two reigns : 
they saw and heard Lord Bacon when he pleaded gently and 
wisely for toleration ; they remembered Witgift speaking 
softly for them, and Bancroft with his frown ; they caught 
light from all the central sources ; they learned stability of 
faith from Pym and from Sidney, and public law from Hale 
and from Coke ; they received direct communication and 
counsel from John Hampden ; they read and perhaps saw 
acted the picturesque and Doric Comus of Milton, and they 
lived by the side of the prince of poets and the prince of 
philosophers, who in the language of Macaulay made their 
age a more glorious and important era in the history of the 
Iniman mind than the age of Pericles or Augustus. It is 



INTELLECTUAL LEADERSHIP IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 227 

their association with living genius and learning which is to 
us in this day a lingering inspiration, for such instruction of 
states lengthens out through the generations. It is some- 
thing of value to us that the founder of Ehode Island kept 
her interest warm by the side of the throne through intimacy 
with the learned historian and premier Clarendon ; that the 
Carolinas are imperishably related to Shaftesbury, the par- 
agon of accomplished ministers, with John Locke, the plii- 
losopher so quaint, original, and great, whose framework of 
government did not endure, but whose benevolence survived 
to welcome the Huguenots of France ; that the Covenanters 
of New Jersey were saturated with the spirit of Milton while 
living, as they had been educated under the writings of 
George Buchanan who went before them ; that over the wide 
South, first named Virginia, still lingers a memory that 
kindles to enthusiasm at the mention of their visitor, the 
incomparable, the thousand-souled Sir Walter Ealeigh. 

In thus speaking of the early masters who have left their 
image in our history, I am indulging in no rhetorical illusion. 
The difficulty in our apprehension of the facts lies within our 
natural limitations. Eemoteness of time casts a haze over 
our perception of the continuity and duration of mental in- 
fluences in forminijj the character of states. If we could 
place ourselves in palpable connection with the generations 
which have passed, the train of public educators would pass 
before us in lifelike and august procession. But this can 
be only partially attained by grouping in speech the great 
personages of history. A venerable and remarkable Chief 
Justice of New England, dead within fifteen years, used to 
say that he once saw a man whose father had seen the first 
child born in the harbor of the Pilgrims ; thus seeming to 
span with his own hand more than two centuries of Massa- 
chusetts. But historical analysis and elimination furnish to 
the thoughtful student a sufficient thread for tracing the lines 
of descent in the life of communities. In the year 1637, 
about the time when a governing power was established in 



228 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

the place where we are now assembled, he who was after- 
ward the author of "Paradise Lost," made a journey into South- 
ern Europe. In Paris he met and was entertained by Grotius, 
who first wrote for freedom of commerce against maritime 
restrictions ; while he remained there Descartes put to press 
his first great philosophical treatise, which is still quoted 
among the causes of change in modern thought ; in Italy he 
turned aside to visit the injured Galileo, whose persecution 
was a feature of the ecclesiastical tyranny of the time ; and 
in the album of an Italian nobleman at Genoa he wrote his 
autograph after that of Thomas Wentworth, the brilliant Earl 
of Strafford. We find, therefore, in this group of contempora- 
ries, thus accidentally brought together, five first-rate figures 
that were directly allied to the advancement of our own 
country. Grotius, that " chief of men," who laid the founda- 
tion of international intercourse in the principles of justice, 
whose doctrines educated the colonies to an early and con- 
stant resistance of the navigation acts of Parliament which 
resulted in their independence ; Descartes, the revolutionist 
philosopher, who enunciated the law of individual conscious- 
ness and intellectual freedom, which at once became seminal 
and vital in every provincial organization on this side, and 
which to-day underlies the constitution of every American 
commonwealth ; Galileo, one of the pioneers and one of the 
martyrs of the revolt of science, whose misfortunes under in- 
quisitorial absolutism reached the ears of the brotherhood of 
reform and helped raise the party which swept with human 
rights over Enoiand and the new world in the West ; Lord 
Strafford, who returned home to aid our cause under Charles, 
by his betrayal of the franchise of his country and our own, 
and after granting no lenity to our friends or our cause at 
lengtli stretched his own neck upon the scaffold ; and John 
Milton, who, unlike his fellow-countryman and fellow-trav- 
eller, stood fast to the challenge of his conscience, and pro- 
claimed in immortal prose the brave thoughts of the new 
dispensation, 



INTELLECTUAL LEADERSHIP IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 229 

'* In liberty's defence, a noble task, 
Of which all Europe rang from side to side," 

which have moved to triumphant deeds eight generations 
upon this continent. It acquaints us with the dignity of our 
pupiLage thus to draw near in imagination to our instructors 
long departed ; it brings before our sight that splendid age 
from which we have derived our power, to call these masters 
around us ; we are with them, and they are with us, when we 
see the blood of the first governor of Massachusetts coursing 
among us in the person of a most accomplished descendant, 
and the blood of another flowing for a testimony to mankind 
under the headsman's axe ; when we look upon the regicide 
judges face to face, Goffe and Whalley on the banks of our 
Connecticut, and Dixwell amid his studies in the shade of 
New Haven ; when Bancroft and Macaulay only disagree 
whether Cromwell and Hampden actually took passage and 
went on shipboard for Boston ; when we know that our own 
Eakigh was a member of the same club in London with 
Ben Jonson and Shakespeare ; when every spirited youth of 
Massachusetts is stirred to the study of the martyred Sidney 
by his Latin on her arms. 

Quite possibly we do not often enough reflect how effect- 
ually the spirit of one man, of a few men, may decide the 
characteristics of a people, the destiny of a state. Under 
the military system of Europe in former ages it was with- 
in the power of a single man to conquer a city and write 
his name upon its walls, to modify, dismember, reconstruct 
a kingdom, and afdx to it for a longer or shorter period his 
own projected will and law. Napoleon was the latest and the 
greatest of this order, but his imperial creations were quickly 
swept back to their original relations, — for though the sword 
may carve the pathway to a throne, it cannot engrave the 
enduring character of a people. But the moral agents in the 
forming of communities leave more lasting impressions, which 
are beyond the power of accident to remove or to change. All 
the laws of human condition, natural generation, veneration. 



230 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

imitation, faith, tradition, and memory combine to perpetuate 
the mould of a commonwealth cast by a master after the pat- 
tern of divine virtue, and every succeeding intellect of grasp 
and sway may add to its symmetry and its strength. Behold 
at our door the power of a man abiding through eight gener- 
ations ! Taught to shrink from the forms of arbitrary power 
whilst a boy lounging about the doors of the Star Chamber, 
taught law from the living lips of Coke, tolerant charity and 
reforming love from the private hours of Milton, many lan- 
guages at Oxford where the classic statue of liberty broke in 
Grecian model on his sight, taught experience and trial, sor- 
row and courage, in Massachusetts, Roger Williams came 
hither from fortunes as varied, as romantic, as those of John 
Smith or Walter Ealeigh, and planted the first purely free 
government on the globe. While Descartes was writing out 
in clearest dialectics, Williams was establishing in concrete 
and everlasting form the absolute and unqualified freedom of 
conscience under human government. I do not know why 
I should not say, since it is true, that jNIassachusetts in her 
march of progressive culture took two centuries almost to a 
year from his removal out of her borders to strike from her 
owu Constitution the last faded badge of the connection of 
the Clmrch and the State. The charter which he dictated to 
the cro\\'n, alone of the original thirteen scarcely changed in 
essentials, still endures for his visible monument ; but in the 
breadth of true catholicity, in the belief of the benevolence 
of human nature, in the cultivation of methods of peace and 
fraternity, in the predominance of a religious sect never at 
variance with any other, which have tided the life of his gifts 
and graces over the lapse of two hundred and forty years, the 
memorial of his invisible glory is reflected through all habi- 
tations and all hearts. The lessons of the teacher caught by 
the leaders of the following age have imparted a tinge and 
flavor to the culture of the State. Perhaps in imagination, 
perhaps in the discernment of reality, I seem to myself to 
trace the extension of the same intellectual freedom to 



INTELLECTUAL LEADEKSHIP IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 231 

another, who in the next century impressed his benevolent 
genius upon the souls of this island home. Berkeley gave 
to this people the four midway years of his life of spirit- 
ual amenity. Of every attainment, grace, and accomplish- 
ment ; admired by every school of pliilosophy, while he 
maintained his own ; beloved by Pope and Swift and Addi- 
son, while they hated each other ; beloved by all in that gal- 
axy that continued the light of the reign of Anne over that 
of two Georges, — he came and erected his bower of study 
among the cliffs of tliis coast. In letters, and in the walks 
of village life, he was to his generation a fountain of instruc- 
tion, and such fountains in a free commonwealth never dry. 
And in the century still the next, another and kindred spirit, 
native-born of the island, devoted to the State the latest 
years of his inspiring lessons, " the love of wisdom and the 
wisdom of love," so rich in the field of general literature, so 
pleading for a wider scope of popular education, for the en- 
franchisement of man, for the world's peace, so aglow with 
the sweet influences of Christianity. To the scholarly and 
devout resident of Newport the whole scene, of cliff and 
beach and the breathing sea, takes on the aspect of a memo- 
rial imperisliable to Berkeley and to Channing. Felicitous 
has been the lot of Ehode Island to have Lad distributed 
over her three centuries three intellectual masters, whose ad- 
ministration of her thought and aspiration was never colored 
by asceticism or gloom, was always stimulating, always serene, 
always encouraging, in full accord with the divine monosyl- 
lable that glistens from her shield. 

The term of active European emigration to this land cov- 
ered rather less than the length of two generations ; and all 
that we are, and all that we have, may in a large degree be 
traced back to the public character which was then estab- 
lished. The roll of those who came contained a number of 
leading minds as large proportionately as the roll of those 
who remained behind. Something that was chivalrous, some- 
thing that was courtly, still adhered to those heads ; much 



232 ADDllESSES OF ALEXANDEll H. BULLOCK. 

learning of the kind that then prevailed, of studied history 
and language ; perhaps not yet much practised statesmanship, 
but, as events soon showed, a great capacity for it. Vane 
and Williams, Endicott and Saltonstall, Winthrop the senior 
and the junior. Hooker and Cotton, were fair types of the 
leaders on both sides, most of them English university men, 
all of them such as led England on to the Eevolution of 
1688 and rescued her Constitution. I allow they became 
especially engrossed in the high mysteries of divinity, which 
became shaded by their forest abode, and took in the vagaries 
of a larger freedom under a new sky. But as they erected 
the altars of the Church and the State upon the same Zion 
and within the same temple, the same subtlety which guarded 
the one also guarded the other ; the same enthusiasm, if you 
please, the same fanaticism, which sustained them in the 
pursuit of abstruse theology, also sustained them in the 
pursuit of a new liberty ; the same extravagant rejection 
of authority which made them faithful dogmatists for the 
Church made them obstinate partisans for the State ; the 
same conscious assurance that made them polemics in relig- 
ion made them republicans in politics. During the calm 
and study of the residence of their sect in Switzerland, by 
the " clear, placid Leman," in the reflection of light and 
shadow from the eternal rnonarchs of nature, their ideas of 
the unseen world had become consolidated, their ideas of the 
social civil framework had become codified; they would have 
no sovereign in their hearts save God, no sovereign in their 
laws not subordinated to their interpretation of Him ; as the 
phrase goes, they would have a Church without a bishop, a 
State without a king. Those were great ideas for that age, 
and they could only be enforced by great and original minds, 
comprehensive and flexible enough for the founders of a na- 
tion. Now, if you follow the history of the scene on which 
these views were acted out, you find that these actors, to 
their character as theologians, whatever you may think of 
that, soon added the acquired character of astute, wary, and 



INTELLECTUAL LEADERSHIP IN AMERICAN HISTORY, 233 

stubborn statesmen. As religionists and as politicians their 
path must soon divide : as religionists they carried every- 
thing in their own way and with a high hand, with none to 
obstruct them ; as politicians the shadows of kingly preten- 
sions advanced gradually over the sea, enveloped them in 
darkness, and shut them in to their wit's end. They were 
obliged to supplement religious zeal with a large worldly 
wisdom, and all the way from about 1640 to 1689 you 
observe in the directors of these provinces a growing genius 
for affairs, a chary taste for civil policy, a certain wise, strong 
sense of diplomacy. "When the mailed hand of royal inter- 
ference approached, so long as they were too feeble to resist, 
they were Fabian in their policy, and warded off the hour. 
On grave occasions they convened their synods and held their 
fasts, but these became a school and an education ; the pul- 
pits were filled by acute teachers, who preached altogether on 
the right side ; so tliat, allowing for their greater share of 
prayer and praise, they had in their synods and their fasts all 
that we should have now in our best chosen constitutional 
conventions. There is notliing more interesting in all the 
life of these progenitors of our history than their studied use 
of diplomacy in the years covering the fall of the first Charles 
and the rise of the second, with Cromwell intervening, — a 
period requiring them to act parts so delicate and so variant, 
with no electric cable to supply them in the evening with the 
policy for the next morning. Great results hung suspended 
on the action of the ministers who assembled in their synods 
in Boston, — for there was not a newspaper published in 
America till tlie eighteenth century, — and they rapidly 
became masters of the situation more by their reserved 
power in diplomacy than by their inspired power in " the- 
ology. They were preparing their generation for a day of 
greater power, when the bell of revolution might safely strike 
the hour. 

That beyond question was the educational period of the 
country, as youth is the period for character in the indi- 



234 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

vidual life. It was her education under the champions of 
her freedom, fitted by endowment and culture to carry her 
through the tremendous process God had ordained. Such 
was their situation and their power. A kind of mediaeval 
port and mien, something like an intellectual feudalism, 
gave to them tlie walk of masters ; they admonished others 
against the authority of kings and nobles, but they did not 
relinquish the authority due to themselves as chosen vessels 
of the Divine purpose for the coming nation. Under their 
treatment of kings and parliaments and commissions, their 
constituents and followers inhaled their first conception of 
an American nationality. Out of that robust and austere 
school came the broader culture and sweeter dispositions of 
later days. Advanced into the next century, those stern 
and dark features had become softened by another education, 
by schools and libraries more purely American, by a younger 
class of scholars spread over the country from the univer- 
sity at Cambridge ; but we ought never to forget that the 
schools, the libraries, and the university were established 
by them. Time was diffusing their mind like the waters 
of irrigation, which, as they receded from the shade and 
gloom of their source, took the warmth of the open field 
and the sparkle of the cheerful sun. Mankind could not 
long live and be happy under the frowns of a puritanical 
theocracy. At once the school of the Church and the State, 
as it approached the middle of the eighteenth century it 
exhibited the manifestations of change ; the work had been 
laid and transmitted to a different generation. Society had 
passed through the transformation which in Scotland would 
be necessary before she could welcome Walter Scott, and in 
America before she would trust herself in the arms of George 
Washington. From the Church all that was superstitious 
or cruel or whimsical in the day of Cotton Mather had been 
burned away in the expiatory fires through which bodies 
politic must sometimes pass, and it rose with a fresh glory 
in the grandeur of Edwards, the learning of Cooper, and the 



INTELLECTUAL LEADERSHIP IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 235 

heroism of Mayhew. The State, too, now slione with a 
majesty distinctively its own, and ascended to the respect 
of Christendom under the eloquence of Otis, the learning 
and strength of John Adams, the magnetic genius of Quiucy 
and Warren, the wisdom of Franklin and the culture of 
Dickinson, and the unconquerable will of Samuel Adams. 
But all that larger growth and attraction, all that wider 
range of tastes and ambitions expanding grandly toward 
the high things of knowledge, were the long-wrought, the 
hard-taught product of the human mind, the human will, 
under the leadership of the age that had gone to its rest. 

A more critical urgency for action had now arrived. A 
better combined array of moral forces than that which led 
the colonies in the last years of their dependence and the 
first of their union we might search the centuries to discover. 
I take for granted you agree with me that the more culti- 
vated minds take the lead in civil life. There is a tlieory 
that public revolutions proceed upward from the body of 
the people, and control, enforce, the orders of intelligence 
above. I do not so read our own or any other history. At 
all times, as it seems to me, perhaps more appreciably to our 
observation in times of great urgency in human affairs, the 
reasonings and generous sentiments of great intellects work 
their way into the common channels of the general mind, 
and fill the office of its directory ; and the attempt to make 
our own country an exception to the rule is a suggestion of 
flattery which the people do not ask, and an illusion which 
the truth will not bear. The nature of men has not changed 
since the old essayist declared that in the coalition of human 
society nothing is more pleasing to God, or more agreeable 
to reason, than that the highest mind should exercise the 
chiefest power. If it were not so, education could not ad- 
vance upon individuals, nor enlightened progress upon na- 
tions. The lower strata of mind draw the electric fires of 
the higher masters. Heads of wisdom are better than princes 
to a state passing through its crises. They supply intellectual 



236 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

aliment to its thought, they impart sympathetic activity to 
its torpid faculties. 

' ' Their speech betimes 
Inspires the general heart ; its beauty steals, 
Brightening and purifying, through the air 
Of common life," 

And there is another part of this law governing public 
opinion, to which the whole race is subject ; I mean the spon- 
taneous, instinctive acknowledgment of intellectual authority, 
the law of faith, of confidence in superior intelligence. We 
are all of us and always under such a lead. Mr. Carlyle, who 
is the least of a literary demagogue, puts this truth home to 
every one of us after his own abrupt and grotesque manner : 
"Now if sheep always, how much more must men always, 
have their chiefs, their guides. Man, as if by miraculous 
magic, imparts his thoughts, his mood of mind, to man. Of 
which high, mysterious truth, this disposition to imitate, to 
lead and to be led, this impossibility not to lead (and be led), 
is the most constant and one of the simplest manifestations." 
And the globe has not borne another people who paid greater 
deference to such guides than our own. It is here that this 
law of our nature has freer and fuller play than in the 
countries which are overshadowed by rank and caste, by ven- 
erable heraldry and names artificial, extending over genera- 
tions their charm. While a single family and its aristocratical 
connections monopolized the administration of England during 
a generation, Chatham was admitted to power only because 
the Almighty had clothed him with characteristics which 
overawed mankind, and Burke never held any first-rate office 
at all under government durinfj the whole of his magnificent 
life. But in this country, rank having no existence, nothing 
else of conventional kind has taken its place, and it has never 
been possible for wealth, or any fiction, or any pretension, to 
withdraw for a length of time the body of its citizenship from 
following the directory of wisdom. In the long run of time 
you cannot fail to see that the hero-worship of our countrymen 



INTELLECTUAL LEADERSHIP IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 237 

takes to some uncommon degree of lettered fame, some rare 
combination of intellectual powers, some form or manifesta- 
tion of special genius or general capacity. Of our country- 
men travelling by thousands in foreign lands, while one turns 
aside from Brussels to visit the scene of the battle of kings at 
Waterloo, ten others make the longer journey from London 
to Stratford to pay the tribute of their veneration at the tomb 
of Shakespeare. 

I return, then, to my topic, that in the dawn of this national 
independency there was at work upon popular opinion a wise, 
brilliant, and effective array of heads which is not easily 
paralleled. The colleges were in tune Math the urgency, and 
the pulpits were filled by a ministry of patriotism toned by a 
cultivated wisdom. The field of civic discussion was under 
the training of a class of men in some of the colonies who 
would have adorned the best of commonwealths at the most 
brilliant of its periods ; the same representative, scholarly 
statesmen upon whom Chatham pronounced the remarkable 
eulogium which Franklin from the gallery heard him deliver, 
and which has ever since been quoted with pride on these 
shores. For a classical, refined public speech, coming from 
studied men, but penetrating the universal heart, it was a 
golden age. It lifted upward and onward to action every 
degree of mediocrity below it. Fifty names start up for 
mention w^hich cannot be surpassed in our day. In the South 
were Eutledge, Gadsden, Peyton Randolph, Bland, the two 
Lees, most of them educated in both countries, reinforced by 
Jefferson and his peers, who breathed into the public spirit 
their own cultivated chivalry ; in the centre was Dickinson, 
fresh from his law of the Temple at London, finished in ele- 
gant literature, whose thoughts passed in French over the 
other Continent, to whose support a little later came Franklin, 
direct from the society of Burke and Pitt, bringing his whole 
nature enriched for his country ; in New England, too many 
rather than too few, — of whom was Hopkins, who knew all 
poetry and all history, who, John Adams said, instructed him 



238 ADDEESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

four years in committee-room in science and learning, whose 
old age to all coming in contact was an inspiration, — of whom 
were the chiefs of Massachusetts, whose roll rounds with the 
names of the two Adamses. Samuel Adams was something 
besides a pious and ptatriotic Puritan ; his humanity was ex- 
quisite and his erudition was genteel, blending grace and 
attraction with the intensity of his appeal. John Adams 
educated the colonies to an intelligent comprehension of the 
situation which was necessary to go before action, and in this 
work he more completely than any other man of this nation 
illustrated the proverb that knowledge is power ; his research 
was boundless and his talent was of every kind ; lie made 
history and the Scriptures, the classic, ancient ages, the prin- 
ciples of law and speculative philosophy, familiar to the 
common understanding, while he rallied the learned profes- 
sions and the schools of the land to the mighty work in hand. 
There were by that time as able lawyers here as the lawyers 
of the Crown, and he was at their head. Scarcely ever before 
had the spirit of a passing time called into such intensity of 
use every grace, every accomplishment and attribute, of the 
npper sphere of the human mind, and never before had any 
people so confidingly trusted to it their hope and destiny. 
They would follow only the wisest and best ; in their vast 
undertaking they would employ no mediocrity ; Georgia, 
Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts would have no less an 
agent in London than Benjamin Franklin ; New York, with 
its salary of a thousand dollars, would liave no other than 
Edmund Burke. They believed that " a great empire and 
little minds go ill together." To which roll in tlie hour of 
its need was added yet another, — the man of little less than 
divine virtue, the Father of his Country, the leader of her 
armies, the most glorious of her citizens, the founder and 
protector of her liberty, he who despised the name of king, 
yet himself was more majestic, whom God manifestly favored, 
that he was in all things his helper, — the unapproached and 
unapproachable Washington. 



INTELLECTUAL LEADERSHIP IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 239 

Nor alone were their chiefs upon this side of the Atlantic. 
This national fabric was shaped, in part, by most expert 
hands of Englishmen. In the prolonged debates of many 
years there was a parliamentary minority of the choicest and 
greatest of the realm, who spoke for justice under the influ- 
ence of the proudest day of the British forum. By general 
consent the most flourishing period of English eloquence 
extends for about half a century from the maturity of Lord 
Chatham's genius to the death of Fox, and a good part of its 
most brilliant exhibitions was during the ten years which 
covered the American questions. Between the opening and 
the close of those questions passed across the stage Grenville, 
Barre, North, Camden, Mansfield, Charles Townshend, Fox, 
Burke, and the heaven-born orator, the elder Pitt, — enough 
for a nation's history and a nation's glory. The parliamentary 
literature of that school can meet the philosophical criticisms 
of Burke himself; it can stand the test of time and the ad- 
miration of ages, because it was founded in good reason and 
just sentiment. It was listened to in the speaking by some 
of our leaders from home sitting in the gallery, among whom 
were Quincy and Franklin ; it came to these shores in fast-sail- 
ing packets, was spread from the ice-fields to the palmettoes 
by the wide- winged press, was repeated from mouth to mouth, 
floated in the air. It was not all upon our side of the ques- 
tions, but it passed here under the hands of masters, was sifted 
of sophism and error, was sent forth, stirring grand sentiments 
of duty, and circulated, all-inspiring, over the New World. 

Nor again to the schools of American and English authori- 
ties alone were our fathers of that day shut in for their 
tuition. From another continent, another tongue, and another 
religion, they heard voices of lesson and sympathy. We are 
forever indebted to France for an early and a late infusion of 
lofty sentiment which has pervaded our public life. In the 
story of religious and romantic adventure displayed in ex- 
ploring and settling this country, the French enthusiasts 
stand out with radiant lineaments upon the historical canvas. 



240 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

Advancing always within the orders of the Catholic church, 
penetrating through primeval forests to the Far West, endur- 
ing every hardship and privation of pioneers, leaving their 
pathway in the wilderness everywhere blazed by the lily and 
the cross, ministering in their faith amid the vortex of savage 
tribes which whirled like angels of darkness around them, 
one after another yielding up their life in solitary martyrdom, 
in the extremest hour chanting in the Latin of the schools of 
France hymns which even then were a thousand years old, 
they have left in every French town of North America, in 
our written annals and unwritten traditions, the traces of 
their spiritual and intellectual heroism. Expelled at length 
as a political power from this country by Great Britain, the 
Nemesis of liistory took in hand their vindication. While 
the gallant Wolfe, by a magical stroke, won to the British 
Crown every French possession east of the Mississippi, there 
were those at work, in the silence of studies about the gay 
capital of France, engineering an intellectual revolution which, 
within twenty years, would sweep from these States the last 
vestige of British dominion. About the year 1763, when 
everything here was ceded to the Crown of England, the 
spirit of a new philosophy was spreading over France and 
radiating upon Great Britain and America. To those who 
were especially engrossed in the study it presented itself, 
perhaps under no deep sense of responsibility, as the fresh 
luxury of newly enfranchised minds, but to the world it bore 
the fruits of political revolution. The satire of Voltaire, aimed 
at the Church which needed it much, fell witli effectual blow 
upon the State which needed it more. The ethereal and 
radical eloquence of Eousseau circulated as an atmosphere; 
the young men crowded the benches and the salons of the 
new school in all the larger cities of the kingdom ; and at 
one time, just before the declaration of our independence, 
more than half a dozen of bold teachers of speculation, wit, 
levity, reason, and philosophy were seated around the throne 
as its premier and its advisers. It was the preparatory school 



INTELLECTUAL LEADERSHIP IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 241 

for modern revolution. It was classical in its study of the 
ancient histories. It soon found its theory and passion im- 
personated in the youthful Lafayette, whose early readings 
had imaged in his reflection and love the models of lost 
republics, and quickly afterward it found the seal of its 
assurance in the treaty of alliance with the United States. 
The authorities of that keen, speculative, daring philosophy 
gave the touch of fate to American independence. And 
in the memorable reception of Benjamin Franklin at Ver- 
sailles, when that brilliant court, destined so soon to pass 
away, was captivated by the decorous simplicity which the 
great American knew quite well when and how to wear, we 
behold the last ceremony in which old institutions and old 
prescriptions, represented by kings and nobles, bowed un- 
awares before the divinity of a new liberty and a new world, 
— the ceremony in which that new liberty and new world, in 
its plain, untitled representative, returned the salute to the 
masters behind the throne who were moving the world to 
revolution. I have never wondered that Jefferson, who after 
our peace passed four grateful years at Paris, intimate and 
favorite with its eminent philosophers, caught " the habit and 
the power of dalliance with those large, fair ideas of freedom 
so dear, so irresistible " to the French people. Almost a cen- 
tury has since passed, and his name is even now treasured in 
the hearts of the French leaders of opinion as that of a master 
and instructor, — an impressive illustration of the ceaseless 
international exchange of thought. Three years ago, Charles 
Sumner came to my apartment in Paris directly from an 
interview with the leader of the more advanced Republicans, 
now recognized as their leader probably by a larger number 
of men than any other living civilian in any country, the 
bold and eloquent Gambetta. He related to me the details of 
the conversation. Gambetta said : " What France most needs 
at this present time is a Jefferson." I will not keep back 
the reply of the great Senator : " You want first a Wash- 
ington, and your Jefferson will come afterwards." 

16 



242 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

My limitations compel me to allusions only on the field of 
our history. We usually observe that the times requiring the 
largest exercise of the intellectual forces, and so bringing into 
activity the supremest men, have been periods of civil, not of 
military events, those preceding or following the trial of war. 
Succeeding to the Ee volution came the exigent time for or- 
ganizing under permanent forms, — the constitutional epoch. 
That term of seven years was the test to virtue, to the capacity 
for outlook and statesmauly projection, without the aid of 
any light reflected from older nations upon the questions to 
be adjusted here. If you reflect how divided this people were 
after the attainment of independence, — that all local tradi- 
tions, prejudices, and attachments which had been buried in 
the war, then returned with a risen life and vigor ; that 
diversities of origin, blood, and temperament resumed their 
individual forces ; that idiocrasies of religion became sympa- 
thetic with localities ; that the vast bulwarks of the natural 
configuration of the continent frowned in the way of our 
unity, — you only recall in part the division and distress of 
the people of the United States under the Confederation. It 
soon grew to a public opinion which alternated between 
national hope and national despair. The Convention which 
assembled in 1787 to organize the fragmentary elements 
which now constitute the most intense nation in existence, 
over which Washington presided, was in a capacious civic 
wisdom superior to any otlier of modern record, — superior, 
in my judgment, to that which had met in the same hall 
twelve years before, upon which Pitt had lavished his rhetoric 
of praise. Washington carried there a carefully prepared 
synopsis of the ancient examples, but amid the great ques- 
tions and great debaters that surrounded him there is no 
evidence that he ever unrolled his manuscript. In the lead 
of the discussions South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and 
'New York figured with unchallenged supremacy. And when, 
afterward, the work of that body was submitted for the con- 
sent of the several States, the debate in popular meetings and 



INTELLECTUAL LEADERSHIP IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 243 

in State conventions summoned to the front every giant 
mind. The scales were turned at last by the pure argumenta- 
tion of two men. I have sometimes asked myself whether, 
under similar surroundings in our own day, beset with the 
same excitement and irritation, the present generation would 
in the same degree as that submit its judgment to the sway 
of a series of papers so calm, passionless, and dialectical as 
those which, under the name of The Federalist, Madison and 
Hamilton, but chiefly the latter, addressed to their country. 
With equal, with greater effect, Madison in the Convention 
of Virginia, Hamilton in that of New York, made their great 
endowments tributary to the solemn decision. Madison was 
born symmetrical for the highest dignities of the statesman, 
and culture completed the work ; sound learning was added 
to a sound judgment, and his mind was illuminated for per- 
spicacity and far perspective. He, and he alone, saved the 
government in Virginia, where, though young in years, he 
was already a popular idol. The issue hung suspended upon 
New York, the last, the eleventh State which was necessary 
to make plenary the consent and ratification, where it was 
carried after immense exertions. All contemporary accounts 
and traditions still existing carry to the credit of Hamilton 
that imperial result. He was then thirty-one years of age, in 
the bloom of his faculties, the finest genius known to Ameri- 
can public life. His ingenuous nature and exquisite sensi- 
bility, from a Huguenot descent ; the unshackled outline and 
clear order of his thought, warmed to color by the fervor of a 
tropical birth ; the flexibility, simplicity, and delicious amenity 
of his style, as pure as Addison's ; his far-distant search and 
reach ; his climacteric ascending in argument ; his judgment, 
which Washington said was " intuitively great," — displayed 
him in his public efforts as one of nature's thinkers, orators, 
jurists, and statesmen. For an entire generation, not ending 
at his death, he was to one half of his countrymen the inter- 
preter of his era. He was a leader who never flattered his 
followers. To him, by consent of all, the civic chaplet falls 



244 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

for tlie decision which gave this government to the ISTorth 
American Republic. In the wandering of a boy from college, 
straying many years ago among the tombstones which mark 
the ancient worthies of New Jersey, in the churchyard at 
Princeton, I stood by the side of a newly made grave, which 
bore as yet no trace of designation at its head. But I could 
not be ignorant as to its tenant after reading the inscription 
over the adjoining spot of earth consecrated to the sleeping 
dust of his kinsman, his ancestor, the glorified Edwards. It 
was the grave of Aaron Burr. " At the mention of that name 
the spirit of Hamilton starts up to rebuke the intrusion, — to 
drive back tlie foul apparition to its gloomy abode, and to 
concentrate all generous feeling on itself." 

I can illustrate my subject by only a brief allusion to our 
next and longer historical stage which followed under the 
Constitution. It was the era of development, bringing to the 
direction of the public life of this country all tliat splendid 
succession which opened with Marshall and Hamilton, Jeffer- 
son and Madison, and closed with the death of Clay and 
Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, Webster, and Everett, — an 
array not surpassed in recent time by the chiefs of English 
administration. It is familiar to many now living how trust- 
ingly the people hung upon their lips and took their direction 
in all the policies of growth and expansion. But it was a 
stage of greater signification than mere development ; it was 
our historical period of interpretation. As you know, at the 
close of Washington's active day all the questions and possi- 
bilities of questions touching the interpretation of the Consti- 
tution, which had been hushed in his sacred presence, flew 
into ceaseless activity, and with only an occasional interval 
continued to excite the general mind down to 1860, when the 
sword became the arbiter. During that protracted discussion 
and discordancy the treatment of the subject assumed the 
highest forms of philosophical argument, and called into use 
the blended acuteness and breadth of jurists and statesmen. 
The existence of the government would be determined by the 



INTELLECTUAL LEADEESHIP IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 245 

settlement of that question of interpretation, so complex, so 
profound, in many respects so metaphysical in its kind, that 
the people by whom it must be settled were largely com- 
pelled to accept upon faith the opinions of their champions ; 
the grander the leadership, the more trustful the following. 
It narrowed down at length to but two men, of whom it may 
be said that one of them argued the country into the greatest 
of modern wars, and that the other prepared it for a success- 
ful deliverance. Since the death of Washington, Jefferson, 
and Hamilton no two men have held the intellectual trust of 
such large numbers and over so many years as Calhoun and 
Webster pending the questions of constitutional interpreta- 
tion. Calhoun was the master of his school. Exemplar of 
high, attracting personal qualities, eloquent with a logic 
which was made fervid by intensity of conviction, reasoning 
unerringly from his elements and rejecting every expedient or 
phenomenal modification, bringing to questions of construc- 
tion the cold and unrelenting methods of science regardless 
of the assistant or opposing forces of practical reasons, he 
towered above his associates in belief, and was followed by 
the undiscriminating ranks that sometimes understood and 
always trusted him. I do not believe we should have had 
the late war if he had lived, but his death left his school to 
drift into it upon the teachings of his lifetime. The vindica- 
tion of the government by the sword in last resort must be 
traced as the logical result of the opposite school, over which 
his great rival presided. I do not overlook that Webster had 
profound and luminous associates in his high argument of 
twenty years for the true doctrine of the government, yet he 
was the acknowledged leader, the accepted champion and 
defender of the Constitution. And now that the rebellion is 
by both sides conceded a failure, now that the principles 
which he maintained are by both sides admitted as a finality 
by trial of war, it is becoming to our intelligence and 
magnanimity to recognize the champion of the faith which 
carried us through. For nothing is more certain than that 



246 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

before the shedding of blood it was under his ehicidation that 
the consolidation of the Union had become so assured in the 
convictions and affections of the people as to have prepared 
them for the conflict. To him, above others, we owe that 
sentiment of nationalism prevailing over statism, which be- 
came compacted and unified with the very fibre of the Amer- 
ican people, and without which the Union would have parted 
at the touch of arms. He first made familiar to modern 
ears the principles upon which alone the government could 
live ; and his pupils, his followers, were attached to the ma- 
jority which upheld it to the last. It is time that all fair 
minds should turn from tlie cloud which shaded his closing 
days, to a full perception of his instructions, which now shine 
with advancing splendor in the Constitution lie defended. 
And in their enjoyment of the fresh, the final triumph of 
their government, which his active genius made doubly sure, 
if a just and grateful people shall divide its honors between 
the leaders of its thought and the leaders of its armies, as 
England divided her honors between Pitt and Wellington, 
then henceforth words of reproach scattered by careless 
tongue over the grave of Webster will no longer be accepted 
as the language of duty or justice, but will be treated with 
only that degree of respect which belongs to ingratitude, to 
flippancy, and to folly. 

But it is time to draw these reflections to a close. I must 
not even glance at the later — perhaps loftier — part of our 
history, fresh in all our hearts as to its causes and its results, 
its immortal deeds and immortal actors. Let it all pass for 
another occasion. A duty remains for each generation of 
intelligent, educated citizens. The day of intellectual guid- 
ance never goes by. All these agencies and methods of a 
more diffused intellectual life, all these potent influences of a 
more distributed education over more numerous gradations of 
intelligence, only render essential a higher standard for the 
higher masters. The advanced seminaries will still continue 
the advanced guard of a well-sustained nationality and liberty. 



INTELLECrUAL LEADERSHIP IN AMEKICAN HISTORY. 247 

Althougli the wants of the age have spurred into activity the 
wonderful divisions and subdivisions of sciences and arts, 
and although the colleges must measurably pass under the 
change, yet so long as the springs of the human soul remain, 
a broad and liberal culture, all the generous sentiments which 
sciences can neither generate nor suppress, the inspiring 
study of old language and old history, the freedom of general 
learning, the increasing catholicity of modern ethics, will still 
plead at the door of every college in the land for that suste- 
nance upon which so many past leaders have thriven to use- 
fulness and power. There are still juices in the old-time 
study for the best manhood of a nation. The colleges would 
be the last, the forlorn hope of a decaying people. It is our 
reasonable expectation that this Union will last through the 
ages ; but if in the providence of God, which stretches beyond 
our sight, its unity and glory shall ever pass away, let the 
last signal which shall be heard in its praise and defence 
come from the chiming bells of its universities. 



ADDRESS 

DELIVERED AT MUSIC HALL, BOSTON, FEB. 8, 1876, ON THE CHARACTER OF 
DR. SAMUEL G. HOWE. 

Accustomed as we have been to pay these public honors 
to the dead, if I am not altogether mistaken, friends and 
fellow-citizens, this occasion is unlike others which have 
preceded it. I do not recall another resembling it in the 
quality of its personal reminiscences. It is an occasion for 
a rare kind of personal homage. It is for no eminent Sena- 
tor or Vice-President, falling with the robes of office still 
about him, and affecting the emotions of a nation that had 
been his auditory, but it is for a man fallen in the daily 
work of half a century in paths of life which are shunned by 
most of mankind, who was unknown in the field and tlie 
forum, yet was distinguished in all Christian lands as a master 
self-consecrated to humanity. His title stands apart, and is 
of his own unconscious winning, — the title of Philanthro- 
pist. In the last hundred years only one man in Great 
Britain has been selected to wear that honor as exclusively 
his own. Other Englishmen of perhaps greater celebrity 
have left a splendid fame for their generous devotion, — Fox 
for his devotion to the very sound of liberty ; Wilberforce 
to negro emancipation ; Eomilly and Mackintosh to civil 
and social reform. But their life was so largely a forensic 
tournament, in which they won crowns for themselves, their 
distinction in philosophy and eloquence was so large a share 
of their renown, that their names have usually been remitted 
to the roll of statesmen and orators. 



DR. SAMUEL G. HOWE. 249 

But there was one — another Englishman — whose labors 
of mercy, sustained by none of the ordinary stimulants of 
ambition, were so obviously and solely for the good of the 
race, followed by a rich harvest to his fellow-men, that the 
encyclopaedias will perpetuate for ages the name of Howard 
as synonymous with philanthropist. We ourselves have had 
more than one man who has been designated in his day as 
the Massachusetts Senator, — more than one who has been 
called her orator, her historian, her poet, — yet I am per- 
suaded that beyond the time of this generation the name of 
Samuel Gridley Howe will be pronounced, as we now pro- 
nounce it, by special eminence, the Massachusetts Philanthro- 
pist. And surely the Commonwealth could not rejoice in a 
higher or nobler title for one of her sons. It is the highest 
of all earthly distinctions, for it is the word the mention of 
which gives him his place in the hearts of all men, — a 
word which represents character and deeds that are not sub- 
ject to the taste or culture of an age, but are unchangeable 
for example and contemplation. Nor can we better dis- 
charge the duty of this hour, than by fastening upon his 
memory the title which shall carry to the schools of the 
State, to all the walks of life, whether of study or business 
or leisure, — to all the ambitions and activities of this won- 
derful people, suggestions and inspirations for consecration 
to the welfare of the race, — the title of the Massachusetts 
Philanthropist. 

The future career of the philanthropist was prefigured in 
the young man of twenty-three. At this distance of fifty 
years from that remarkable outburst of sympathy which 
directed so many minds toward the Greek Eevolution, the 
glare and romance which then surrounded the scene and 
the actors have given place to the cool judgment of history. 
Military adventurers thronged from all parts of the Conti- 
nent to the theatre of the M'ar, with the usual result ; and 
before Lord Byron set out from Genoa, he saw enough of 
disappointed and returned officers to check the enthusiasm 



250 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

of a less resolute spirit than his own. There were two per- 
sons, how^ever, who did go to remain. Byron was the illus- 
trious over all whom the societies in England contributed 
to that service. Superannuated with pleasure and sorrow 
at thirty-six, his hair already turned gray, and his heart 
withered, he enlisted for a new life and new glory with 
a resolution and zeal which led the pathway of the poet to 
his martyrdom. There was no sham or illusion about his 
purpose. But to all of that zeal Dr. Howe brought the 
added freshness and purity of youth, with the calculation 
and firmness of manhood. In his going, I do not so much 
observe the knight-errantry. I behold him, rather, then first 
developing a heaven-horn genius for serving his fellow-men ; 
I see him at that early day overcoming the law of nature 
which makes us cold to the relations of distant misery. 

He remained to the end ; and it was one of the brief and 
happily completed periods of history which found the com- 
bined fleets of the Christian powers of Europe engaging in 
the battle of Navarino to enforce the same rules wliich the 
illustrious representative of Massachusetts in Congress had 
so eloquently demanded four years before, and wliich also 
found at the same moment, among the military forces on 
the land, another young brave soul of Massachusetts co- 
operating in arms. It was the period of test and trial to our 
departed friend ; and the record of his six years in Greece 
has significance and value, because it is the record of a young 
man struggling in earnest for the cause of the oppressed. I 
conceive that fancy had little to do with his enlistment. 
No doubt, as he approached the land of his service, its an- 
cient and heroic annals rose in his imagination, — its story 
and song ; its waters, on which he was soon to battle as 
the great had battled before ; its temples, wliich he had read 
of and was so soon to behold ; its mountains, under crown of 
snow and flush of sunset, — but these were only the acces- 
sories in the picture. His mind rested on the darker and 
sterner background of privation and hunger and sickness 



DR. SAMUEL G. HOWE. 251 

and personal peril ; but over them all, of duty to dare and 
endure for the rescue of a down-trodden portion of his kind. 
Nothing short of this high conception and purpose could have 
borne liim through those lengthened years of trial and ex- 
posure, — in the cock-pit, the ambulance, and the hospital ; 
in guerilla bands on land, and tlirough every gradation on 
deck ; in soliciting and distributing charity ; in the labors 
of colonizing a disorganized people ; through all the mingled 
functions, from a constable to a commander-in-chief of a 
colony, — until at length, after six years, disease drove him 
from the country, and sent him back to his profession. Now, 
if there be any school of experience in which a man's bent 
is confirmed and fixed, certainly he was returned to us from 
such a field strengthened in his high motive and purpose, 
trained and inured for the work which his destiny had as- 
signed to him. 

His Excellency, who now presides over our expanded plan 
of State charities, was a mere lad forty-five years ago, when 
as yet in the beauty of his youth our lamented citizen gave 
to the unorganized system the first quickening of a visible 
life. Within the space of three years, from 1829 to 1833, an 
organization of the humane sentiments of this community 
sprang into existence, and was followed by results which have 
not been surpassed in the history of benevolence. It is known 
that there were twenty-five thousand blind persons in Great 
Britain, that there was a large but unascertained number in 
this Christian Commonwealth ; and a desire to methodize some 
measures of relief began to stir in many hearts. We were 
about to take the lead on a broad scale in this country in 
bearing light into the abodes of shadow, and the leaders were 
found who were worthy of the enterprise. Fisher and Brooks 
had opened the books for subscription. Prescott, then groping 
his way in partial blindness to works of imperishable fame, by 
writing up the theme in the " North American Eeview," had 
awakened a generous concern in the circles of affluence and cul- 
ture. But the work was still languishing for a great giver, the 



252 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

chances were at a balance, when the more than princely mer- 
chant, Thomas Handasyd Perkins, put his munificent hand into 
the scale. And still the master genius was wantiug who could 
and who would execute the sublime work, when Howe offered 
his life service to the education and elevation of the blind. I 
need not ask you who take pride in Boston, you who take pride 
in Massachusetts, — I need not ask you whether in all New 
England, whether in any State, humanity ever gathered to its 
assistance a nobler group or a more brilliant staff. Some of 
us remember both of those two central figures, Perkins and 
Howe ; so unlike in their education and avocations, yet linked 
in our annals by an enduring tie of beneficence, themselves 
have joined in a union that can never be broken the practical 
and ideal Boston. When I first saw Colonel Perkins, then 
an old man, his face seemed itself an institution of benevo- 
lence ; or, at least, I could say of him, as the great Spanish 
romancer said of one of his characters, that his countenance 
was a benediction. He has been dead more than twenty 
years, and only a small part of this generation have known 
anything about him. But you and I, your Excellency, having 
some occasion for being acquainted with the magnificent body 
of humanities with which his name is connected, could not 
stand by the grave of his associate in benevolence and not 
recall him to our fellow-citizens. 

It is not for me, within these limitations, to expatiate at 
length upon the service rendered by Dr. Howe in his chosen 
department of life work. He accepted it as his mission with 
the same alacrity with which the average graduate of the 
school reaches out for fame or fortune. He made his venture, 
with what special genius or fitness no one then could say, 
though the world now knows, into the field of darkness, to 
which he was soon to add the field of science. In that field, 
comprising at once the wide range of philosophical analysis 
and practical development, he became the authority on this 
side of the water; and lie has given to the Massachusetts 
school the foremost rank among the twenty other institutions 



DK. SAMUEL G. HOWE. 253 

of the same kind, more or less, — Mr. Sanborn can tell us 
how many there are, — which have sprung up on these shores 
under his leading. 

This great success in establishing what may be called a 
structure of national humanity has been his work. But 
great as it appears in its present proportions, it was greatest 
in the beginning. Now, when the whole subject has become 
I'amiliar to the common apprehension, men little understand 
the patience and devotion which was necessary at the com- 
mencement. How many would have turned away from the 
first experiment ! But he took for his encouragement the 
truth expressed by Prescott in such words of pathos, that 
" the glimmering of the taper which is lost in the blaze of 
day may be sufficient to guide the steps of him whose paths 
lie through darkness." There is nothing in the recorded 
manifestations of sympathy or of poetry which surpasses in 
interest the character of his early experiments, in almost 
creating a new sense for an immortal mind. The great 
modern delineator of the miseries of the unfortunate and the 
glories of charity, Mr. Dickens, in his reminiscences of the 
South Boston Institution, has depicted those solemn efforts 
of Dr. Howe in the colors of truth laid by his art. He was 
original and without an equal in raising deafness, dumbness, 
and blindness combined to a perfect use of human language. 
He invented an alphabet, and advanced step by step through 
all the ingenuities of tangible typography. He imparted a 
vision of the Divine Being, and gave a New Testament which 
the sightless may read. He took up the conception of 
Milton, who knew both sight and blindness, that the Al- 
mighty appears to cast gloom over the blind, not so much 
by deprivation of sight, as by the shadow of the Divine 
wings, — "nectam oculorum hebetudine quam ccelestiura 
alarum umbra has nobis fecisse tenebras videtur," — and even 
that shadow he sought to irradiate. I ought rather to say, 
that he turned away from the sad spirit of Milton, expressed 
in his Latin, and that by new methods of printing and new 



254 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

methods of instruction he made attainable to his blind con- 
stituents the more cheering invocation of the same great 
poet, expressed in his own English, — 

' ' So mucli the rather thou, Celestial Light, 
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers 
Irradiate." 

By his example and instructions through all these years, 
Dr. Howe taught the State to reverence human nature in 
every individual being. I have sometimes thought that it is 
one of the defects which ought to be expected under our 
large freedom, that the government might be in danger of 
overlooking the individual, — all persons being free, and sup- 
posed to take care of themselves ; government being restricted 
in its duties, and parting with somewliat of its parental 
character. This teacher, who has been so long at the head 
of the eleemosynary departments of the Commonwealth, has 
done a great deal to correct this defect. He began aud ended 
with the individual. A hundred years hence, he will be cited 
— Massachusetts will be cited — in all Christian countries, 
for his exertions in a single case upon a single individuah 

Reverence for human nature, as represented in every child 
of God, lay at the foundation of his work ; and he, more than 
anybody else, has made it the foundation of the noblest 
structure of charities which any American State has organ- 
ized. He began forty years ago b}'' taking up as worthy of 
his daily care, and worthy of the care and aid of the Com- 
monwealth, " a silent, helpless, hopeless unit of mortality ; " he 
followed up the case, and induced the State to follow it to the 
day of his death ; and the seal of his last will bids her live un- 
der that same protection after he is dead and gone. That is 
the principle upon which our charities rest. 

The life aud well-being of all are inseparably connected 
with the welfare of the individual. The bloom and vigor 
of the whole people can only be real and lasting as they are 
shared by every class. You can infuse freshness and strength 
into the State only as you infuse freshness and strength into 



DR. SAMUEL G. HOWE. 255 

the tie which connects the State with every individual. That 
has become the doctrine of Massachusetts. That is the doc- 
trine which uphokls our system of rehefs and reforms, of edu- 
cation and charities, which has grown up under the tuition 
and practice I have described, until it now attracts inquiry 
from foreign lands. 

In a single year I remember to have received, at the 
Executive Chamber of the State House, letters of this charac- 
ter from two governments of Europe and from one in South 
America. But we have not come to this without the study 
and efforts of men whose hearts were heroic, and whose lives 
were dedicated to the race. The first State lunatic hospital, 
the creation of Horace Mann, was opened about the same 
time that the Institution at South Boston opened its doors to 
his friend of college days, whose name we honor tliis evening. 
They have both gone away from us ; but let us devoutly 
trust that their works may not follow them. Wherever you 
may trench, still spare the temple of our charities, erected, 
enlarged, and embellished over this half-century by the open- 
hearted and open-handed of this munificent city, — by the 
culture, the grace, and the virtue of the best sons of Mas- 
sachusetts. If there are those whose hearts and hands are 
cold for want of destructive occupation, I still pray they may 
not gain friction and warmth by hacking at the monuments 
of Perkins and of Lyman, of Dwight and of Clarke, of Mann 
and of Howe. 

But it is impossible that we should here pass in review so 
long and varied a life. That life is not a paragraph nor a 
chapter ; it is a history, of constantly added scenes of philan- 
thropic adventure and of constantly added phases of character. 
It takes us to Greece, and the College of Erance, and the 
prisons of Prussia ; over more than twoscore years in daily 
walks to the Institution at South Boston ; through courses of 
investigation which led to the establishment of schools for 
the feeble-minded ; through inquiries and efforts, never given 
over, to improve the administration of prisons, and to give 



256 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

a fair chance before God and man to the released prisoner ; 
over a constantly manifested care for neglected children and 
youthful offenders ; into long counselling and co-oj)eratioa 
for the cause of general education ; to his humane assist- 
ance — known to his Maker, but kept a secret from his Gov- 
ernment — for the escape of the fugitive slave ; to his interest 
in the war of freedom, and his service on the sanitary board in 
smoothing the pillow of the soldier ; to his mission after the 
war to inspect the condition of the redeemed ; and at length, 
a few years before his death, back again across the Atlantic 
to bear food to a starving people ; and wherever this history 
takes us, and wherever we find him, we see a free and true 
man, without fear or favor of his kind, saying, not in words, 
of which he was chary, but in deeds, with which lie abounded, 
" Behold, I am here. Lord ! " 

It would be an omission in my memory of an official con- 
nection witli him, extended over three years, if I were not to 
bear my testimony to his almost ubiquitous attendance on 
his work ; he was at South Boston, he was at his office in 
town, he was at the rooms of the Board of Charities, he was 
at the Executive Chamber, he was sometimes at his own 
house, he was always where duty called. He seemed capable 
to drive all the reforms and charities abreast, and yet he 
was seldom on a strain ; always having an air we all liked of 
a man of business, of a man of the world, what Carlyle would 
call " a good, broad, buffeting way of procedure;" of daunt- 
less force of character, of firmness that was impassive, of 
modesty that was unfeigned ; a little mutinous whenever 
governors attempted to interfere with his methods, but that 
was of no consequence since he was mutinous to revolt 
whenever he saw the image of God oppressed or wronged or 
neglected. Nor will I leave him without an allusion to his 
last great work. I refer to his association with a few other 
gentlemen — more active in this than he was, whose names I 
might call if some of them were not present — in organizing, 
I may say in establishing, under the endowment of Clarke that 



DR. SAMUEL G. HOWE. 257 

noble institution on the banks of the Connecticut, where the 
deaf and dumb learn to discern a voice from a mute breath, 
to catch human language at sight from human lips. I look 
to that institution with perfect assurance of the greatest re- 
sults, and I recur not without sensibility to the days when 
we thought him essential to us in laying its foundations. 

Over the tomb of the philanthropist I would not hang out 
his insignia of the Greek Legion of Honor, nor his cross of 
Malta, nor his medal of Prussia. I would instead record 
there the words of Edmund Burke, applied by him to John 
Howard and his mission : — 

" He penetrated into the depths of dungeons ; he plunged into 
the infections of hospitals ; he surveyed the mansions of sorrow 
and pain ; he took the gauge and dimensions of misery, depres- 
sion, and contempt ; he remembered the forgotten, he attended 
to the neglected, he visited the forsaken, and he compared and 
collated the distresses of all men in all countries." 



17 



THE CENTENNIAL SITUATION OF WOMAN. 

ADDRESS AT THE COMMENCEMENT ANNIVERSARY OF MOUNT HOLYOKE 
SEMINARY, MASSACHUSETTS, JUNE 22, 1876. 

If I were to adapt my theme precisely to this presence and 
this occasion, I should perhaps confine myself to some of the 
methods employed in educating the sex to which this insti- 
tution lias been set apart. But a good reason for thrusting 
this duty aside may be found in my own unfitness for it, aris- 
ing by no means from a want of interest in the subject, — 
for that interest, even if it had been dim before, your counte- 
nances alone would brighten to-day, — but springing rather 
from my habits of life and occupation, which have not held 
me in objective intimacy with that delicate inquiry, the most 
important of our time. Neither does this day nor this school 
need me in that duty, which has been so well discharged by 
your speakers of former years, especially and most completely 
by the President of this institution, to whose studies and 
labors your sex is under many and great obligations, and 
mine is under more and greater obligations. Whilst, there- 
fore, I aim to keep myself in sympathy with the spirit of 
your anniversary, you will permit me to turn away from the 
exact reasoning and analysis, supported by a professional 
experience, which tliat duty would require, and as a loyal 
citizen of America, speaking to her equally loyal daughters, 
to invite you within that magical centennial circle from 
which in this present year all our institutions and experiences 
pass out in review. The restrictions of the hour will permit 



THE CENTENNIAL SITUATION OF WOMAN. 259 

me to touch only in a desultory manner upon a broad consid- 
eration of the situation of woman at tlie close of another 
centenary. The progress of civilization and the advance of 
the whole race in the course of a century covers for the most 
part meliorations in which both sexes share alike, nor in a 
just sense can there be any benefit for the one which is not 
also a benefit for the other ; and yet in certain fields of im- 
provement women have been so distinctively the beneficiaries 
of the last hundred years, that their condition in this partic- 
ular stands apart from the general advancement of mankind, 
and challenges our special attention. 

The position of the sex in the view of social science, as 
factors in our systems of political economy and industry, takes 
precedence in every discussion of the situation. The merely 
sentimental relations of what is called woman's mission, the 
treatment of her as a poetical being whose primary office is 
to attract and charm, are essentially modified in this later 
age by the lessons of a practical and working world. "We are 
met in the outset by the conspicuous fact, that at the present 
time in Great Britain and in our own country, which in this 
respect I adopt as the best exponents of modern civilization, 
a very large proportion of women, under the liberal methods 
of our industry, are earning their living ; and although this 
may seem a topic of ungentle features to be presented before 
young ladies mounting on the wings of exhilaration to more 
airy spheres, it nevertheless represents the most important 
advancement which their sex has made in tlie events of 
the century. The significant part of it is, that they have 
made this advance for themselves, and that men have not 
made it for them. In the earlier ages their position Avas the 
natural result of their inferiority in physical strength ; and 
accordingly handmaids rather than helpmates, slaves rather 
than companions, are not only historical characters of savage 
life, but are actual and existing characters in the lowest and 
least educated portions of civilized life. I am aware that in 
our traditions and our literature it has been the accepted 



260 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

phrase, that woman is maintained by father or husband or 
brother. This theory is a type of real existence in excep- 
tional circles at all times, and has much to recommend it. 
Certainly it is attractive to a man of cultivated tastes, that he 
may turn aside from the dusty avenues of his own daily 
offices, and refresh liimself by the very presence of a refined 
and spiritual being, whom he treats sometimes as a saint and 
sometimes as a spoiled child ; nor is this practice apt to be 
rejected by the saint or the child.- But in point of fact, 
speaking of the sex as a whole, this has never been more 
than a partial truth, and wherever it has been true at all, it 
has not been generally to their advantage. In jDcriods when 
there were only the gentlewoman and the low-born woman, 
the one was indeed maintained by the other ; but the one also 
belonged to the other, or to the master of both ; and self- 
dependence, whether ideal or actual, was as unknown as the 
electric telegraph. In the progress of time the uprising of a 
middle class, and the introduction of shop-keeping and tex- 
tile manufactures, stimulated the dead level of female life ; 
and in the subsequent growth of this middle class, which in 
every nation has come to be the social bulwark, in the varied 
division of industries, in the widening opportunities to assert 
and maintain their individuality, women have escaped the 
pernicious condition which formerly darkened the best por- 
tions of Europe, under which, for want of occupation for 
independent maintenance, the daughters were shut in to the 
alternative of an enforced marriage or an enforced convent, 
— and whatever else woman was made for, I do not believe 
she was made for a marriage or a nunnery against her will. 

Now in this extent of her emancipation, — if I employ 
the right phraseology, — the last hundred years have wit- 
nessed a constantly increasing exaltation in her situation as 
a component of our civil economy, which surpasses the at- 
tainment of five or ten preceding centuries. Her part in 
the business of life, diffusing its influence over all common 
and all cultivated ranks, and changing the entire form of 



THE CENTENNIAL SITUATION OF WOMAN. 261 

society, is one of the amazing facts of our time. Twenty 
years ago, — I have not seen the later returns, — of six mil- 
lions of women above twenty years of age in England and 
Scotland, it was found that three millions, or one half of 
the whole number, were special in the industries and were 
independent supporters ; and some writers expressed the 
opinion that there were not fifty thousand in England who 
were not in some manner industrial and self-sustaining. I 
regret that from the returns of our own census I cannot 
derive a clear and satisfactory statement ; but it is obvious 
to all of us that the result would not be unlike the English 
conclusion. No doubt the industries of female life in Massa- 
chusetts, leaving out the department of agriculture, bear a 
close resemblance to those of England, and the lesson derived 
from them is a characteristic of this generation. Under our 
changed and more liberal political economy, the need and 
supply of female industry has proved to be one of the most 
active agencies of social improvement, and has advanced the 
sex to independence and equality. This has not come from 
their own assertion or ambition, but it has been the growth 
of their necessities and their virtues. It has grown up out 
of the commercial spirit of the age, which has been their 
educator and benefactor. While man, heretofore arbiter of 
the social law, of his own volition would have preserved 
woman in the fancied unworldliness with which his reading 
and imagination associated her, the genius of modern commerce 
has led her out into its fair and open field, where the mag- 
nets of a hundred occupations attract her, and in following 
them neither is the bloom of her character sullied, nor her 
place in the household abandoned, nor her religion profaned. 
Occupation, widened in its variety and raised in its quality, 
presents her everywhere on high ground under the divine 
and human economy, and presents her nowhere lowered in 
the scale of immortal being. Emerged from seclusion and 
dependence to the light of active life, she yet holds in her 
own hand the veil of her own protection. Her steps are 



262 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

out over the State. She is mistress of the advancing corps 
of educators ; she ranks among the enlightened authors of 
poetic and didactic creations ; she assists with clean hands 
the power of the press, the modern regulator ; she is the 
indispensable adjunct and sometimes the principal in at 
least one of the learned professions ; she draws her passion- 
ate intuitions in imperishable colors over the field of art ; 
she transfers finest perceptions over the finger to handiwork 
of utility and beauty ; she raises manufactures by with- 
drawing them from the shop to the house ; she takes pos- 
session of the doors of trade and establishes what is orderly 
and becoming for the rule of the place ; she transmutes 
her own spirit and taste by daily labor into the national 
character ; she alike creates and adorns whatever of hospi- 
tality we enjoy, — she makes the law of beauty the law of the 
table, — she makes home a refuge, a school, and an altar. It is 
an era of woman brought to independence by the unwritten, 
irreversible laws of political economy, — of her advancement 
under the influences of a commercial age. The last fifty 
years have seen old barriers broken down, which can never 
be restored, new avenues opened, which can never be closed, 
over which her advancing step has not been so much the 
movement of her design as it has been the fulfilment of her 
destiny. This hand of social reform has been gentle but 
resistless. 

This great change in the social condition has not been 
effected without corresponding change in the civil rights of 
women. In Great Britain much has been gained by equi- 
table legislation in half a century, and much remains yet to 
be accomplished before a just legal relation will be estab- 
lished between the sexes. In our own Commonwealth the 
progress in this province of legal reform has been such as 
to leave little remaining to be desired. I dare say some of 
the younger States may be in the lead of us in this respect ; 
but without knowing precisely liow that may be, I am war- 
ranted in selecting Massachusetts as presenting a model of 



THE CENTENNIAL SITUATION OF WOMAN. 263 

the legal status of the rights of women, and as a represen- 
tative of the general tendency of American legislation. The 
condition of the rights of married women under the law has 
been a fruitful subject of discussion for a long period ; but 
at last, in our own State at least, it must be admitted that 
the sceptre of the master, whether the sceptre and the mas- 
ter be real or imaginary, has substantially departed. For a 
general statement, a hundred years ago the common law of 
England was the prevailing rule here, and in that law there 
was a degree of unjust inequality which cannot and ought 
not to be defended. It bore some flavor of the early time, 
when the physical weakness of woman appears to have been 
the measure of her rights ; it tasted more distinctively of 
the feudal ages, when chivalry invested her with a sort of ideal 
dignity, but continued to handle her with gloves of mail ; 
it carried a part of the spirit of Teutonic equality and more 
of Roman equity, to which some of her present immunities, 
including that of dower, may be traced back for their origin. 
But as a rule, upon her marriage, it swept into the hands of 
her husband the main body of her personal property and 
personal rights. I allow that he in turn incurred some seri- 
ous incumbrances and liabilities, but they by no means cor- 
responded in importance to those which she surrendered. 
Without doubt the theory of his possession was held to fit 
the theory of her protection. But after all that can be said 
in explanation or extenuation, for the greater portion of her 
civil rights, a century since, a woman married was in a state 
of civil subjection which, according to the analogies of other 
improvements, ought to have been removed a century before 
that time. But in the spirit of freedom of modern commerce, 
and in the power of education, this injustice from root to 
branch has mostly been swept away. By successive stages 
of legislation, commencing almost immediately after the 
adoption of the State constitution in 1780, followed up from 
interval to interval, and culminating in the sweeping law 
of 1874, the whole force of these inequalities has yielded 



264 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. EULLOCK. 

before the paramount equities of the situation ; and to-day 
the personality, the independence, of woman, in civil rights 
under the law, stands out the crowning achievement of this 
Commonwealth. If the making of the laws had been in her 
own hands, I do not believe that they could be more be- 
neficent. 

Nor has her relation to marriage been less generously 
touched by the hand of time. According to the old usages 
of England, of which the sanction and obligation is not yet 
gone by, the ecclesiastical laws and the ecclesiastical courts 
were infected by the spirit of the Papal Church, and that 
spirit always fell upon women in matrimony with the force 
of a vermilion edict. I know it may be said that in dealing 
with the two persons in this relation of life, the same rule 
reached to both parties within the bond, and yet, such is 
man and such is woman, in their different spheres of lib- 
erty and action, tliat contumely, tyranny, or wrong in that 
sacred relation found five sufferers on the weaker side, where 
it found one on the stronger side. The questions which arise 
in marital alienation involve not solely the right of woman 
to her property and her children, — though that is grave 
enough for most broad and solemn justice, — but they in- 
volve her right to herself, to her self-respect, to a good place 
in the social scale, to her " maiden meditation," to the free- 
dom of her heart, and the holiness of her love. It may be 
granted that in the spirit of the espousal she is bound by a 
sacramental tie ; but it is not an eternal compact under 
wrong. In our own recent time Prussia, Austria, and France 
have been struggling for the recognition of marriage as a 
civil contract, and the German mind is winning the day fi-om 
Eome to justice. In no American state, so far as I know, has 
marriage ever been treated in the European sense as a sacra- 
ment, nor is there any possibility that it ever will be so 
treated ; but in some of the older States of this Union, at the 
time referred to, the right to a release from an unnatural or 
perverted alliance was treated with a severity which, as with 



THE CENTENNLVL SITUATION OF WOMAN. 265 

a flaming sword, would fain drive the ill-starred pair back to 
an impossible paradise. Here again the silent forces of polit- 
ical economy have been the pioneers of the legal reform. So 
many and so grave were the civil incongruities of enforced 
union, where its spirit had been extinguished by neglect or 
abuse, so frequent and serious the conflict in the relative 
positions of both persons in cases of separation not recog- 
nized by law, so impossible under the ancient laws equitably 
to adjust irreconcilable questions as to children and property, 
that more liberal and humane statutes were called in to cut 
the knot and to furnish relief and remedy. I believe that 
we are now living under a more just and suitable construc- 
tion of marital relations, than any century has before enjoyed. 
The reform has been broad in the interest of women. In the 
diverse treatment of the subject under the jurisdiction of so 
many States no doubt it is difficult to close the door against 
all immoral effects ; but, taking the State in wliich we reside 
for our field of observation, I am convinced that the welfare 
of women in marriage has been promoted, in the last forty 
years, more nearly to a perfect condition than could have 
been conceived under the ancient systems of the world. 
Their immunity of person and property, their right to release 
from oppression practised under the certificate of a wedding, 
their opportunities of return to their own industry, their own 
affections, and their own religion, are advanced to a degree 
which suits their moral and social necessities ; which ac- 
cords with a civilization built up on the overthrow of eccle- 
siastical dogmatism and superstition, too long received under 
the name of conservatism. 

But the chief motive cause in the elevation of the sex 
during the last part of the century has been the quickening 
power of education. If the Eeformation of the sixteenth 
century sent forth any triumphant lesson to pervade the 
world, it was the opinion that the right of private judgment 
must be accompanied by the education of those who are to 
employ it. But though the sentiments of Luther tended in 



2G6 ADDKESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

that direction, so unfamiliar was that age with the conception 
of woman rising above her recognized sphere, that it re- 
mained for later time to bring home to her the beneficence of 
the vital principle upon which alone complete Protestantism 
can stand. Conventual houses bore some fruit of education, 
but it was intended and was kept limited in its uses ; the birds 
might practise their voices within, but they might not send 
out their heavenly airs over the waiting communities. And 
not until the work of the Protestant reformers had been sup- 
plemented by political freedom, not until free expression of 
thought had been circulated by the wings of commerce, was 
the way prepared for this later blessing. And it was a long 
time in coming. Chivalry had cast about a chosen few of its 
heroines an artificial glare, but it was the flame of gallantry 
and not the light of knowledge. The superstitions of the 
church for hundreds of years dropped around the mass of 
the sex a drapery of exclusion and ignorance which was im- 
penetrable to light. The church has been to them, in too 
many instances, a mysterious and uncertain guardian. We 
are accustomed to say that their social exaltation has come 
out of Christianity, and so I believe, — but not altogether 
out of its professional ministers and teachers. Even in our 
time the Church has been a doubtful guide for conducting 
them to the culture which would alike animate their in- 
dustries and irradiate their homes. We have been told tliat 
the late unfortunate Empress of the French, under inspi- 
ration of the southern custodian of the conscience of France, 
was industrious over the spiritual condition of her charge, 
including the imperial consort ; but I have never heard 
that she received from the same consecrated source any in- 
structions to aid in raising up six or eight millions of be- 
nighted peasant-women out of gross ignorance by the magical 
touches of education. My clerical friends around me will 
pardon me for the suggestion, that even in our generation 
Protestant clergymen, in treating this delicate subject, may 
have too often overlooked the ways of worldly wisdom. If 



THE CENTENNIAL SITUATION OF WOMAN, 26? 

one half of the force of learning and intellect, which in 
assemblies and synods, in councils and pulpits, has been 
expended upon the question whether a man with three or 
four motherless children may or may not marry the sister of 
the deceased wife, had been devoted to the living, impending 
question of educating all the girls in the village with sweet 
graces for wives and tender fitness for mothers, perhaps 
Christianity would not have lost any credit as the renovator, 
nor its preachers any honor as benefactors. The result of a 
different procedure has been, what might have been expected, 
that the widowers in apparently increasing numbers have 
continued to marry the sisters, and maidens in numbers alto- 
gether too large have neglected to educate themselves for 
married life. But Protestant Christianity, selecting other 
agencies of influence, has brought its enginery to bear upon 
the work of female education. The great spiritual hero of 
the Eeformation sounded the key-note for the uprising of the 
sex, and commercial communities, stimulated by the spirit of 
true religion and the conscious power of education, liave 
helped the movement forward never to go back. 

More than a century ago, there was, among a few of the 
supreme women of Europe, a culture of which the splendor 
has descended to us in tradition and letters. It came from 
a conventual and aristocratical education, which in some re- 
spects has rarely been surpassed. For elegance and refine- 
ment of the written and spoken word, for wit enforced by 
animal spirits, for talent enlivened by ardor of imagination 
and sustained by constitutional gayety even in the shadow of 
old age, a limited number of the women of France, of the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, have left a celebrity 
which still abides in literature and society. For truthful 
expression and natural manners the letters of Madame de 
Sevigne have long been a social classic in Europe, and have 
been deemed so worthy of study in our country that Mr. 
Everett warmly commended them to the young ladies of 
Massachusetts. Several others attained to similar fame in 



2C8 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

conversation and letter-writing, a province in which women 
are natural authors. The letters of Mesdames du DefFand 
and de Choiseul and Mademoiselle de I'Espinasse, not to 
extend the list, have made their sex illustrious in the annals 
of genteel education. In and around the English court life 
in the last age were memorable literary exemplars. But this 
development was confined to a small class, and was more 
brilliant than worthy of imitation. ]\Iany of the characters 
were such types of their sex as Horace Walpole was a type 
of ours. They trifled with the solemn realities of duty, and 
employed intellect to flatter the weakness and the vices of 
society. It was a culture of graces and not of the reason and 
the heart, — which " turned mortal life into a fine dream, and 
presented death as but a drooping of the garlands of a feast 
from which the guests have departed." It was an era of 
theatric pageant of life, in which the modest millions of the 
ranks of the sex could have no part to act. Anything like 
the need of an open field for the education of the greater 
number was not recognized in the opinion of that day, and 
that recognition was slow in appearing. 

The present American system of female education is the 
result of a long conflict with unenlightened public sentiment, 
a triumph over prejudices which have had no analogy in the 
other ways of our life. The river which sweeps with graceful 
curvature under the ceaseless challenge of yonder sentinel of 
the valley, bringing to your doors the lessons of an undying 
master, the incitations of a perpetual poem, is the witness 
and interpreter of my topic. Upon either of its shores all 
other advancements were made full six scores of years before 
this one. Every successive invention or discovery of agri- 
culture was brought to use in the cultivation of this allu- 
vion ; every stage of applied science was quickly seized and 
appropriated by the practical and mechanical arts ; inquisi- 
tive and progressive theology under Edwards and his suc- 
cessors sounded through generations up and down the 
Connecticut ; civil freedom and political science were never 



THE CENTENNIAL SITUATION OF WOMAN. 269 

without a patron and teacher in Hawley and Strong, in Mills 
and Bates, in Allen and Aslimun ; genius of world-wide fame 
gathered boys at its feet for instruction on the heights of 
Northampton ; all the churches and all the ministers within 
a forty-mile circle put themselves for' ten years under self- 
denying ordinances, until a college for young men should 
be set in the swelling landscape of Amherst ; while, in all 
that long period, the idea of a seminary for the education of 
young women existed, I suppose, among the eternal decrees, 
— certainly fifty years ago it existed nowhere else. In 
England the condition was not less deplorable. In the com- 
paratively recent lifetime of Sydney Smith female education 
was so utterly disregarded that in one of the most vigorous 
papers of that extraordinary man he sought to enlist for the 
subject the interest of his countrymen by a course of argu- 
ments which we have now so far outgrown that if I were to 
employ them here to-day you would deem them scarcely 
above platitudes and truisms. The difiiculty in the way was 
an indurated and concealed popular belief of the inutility 
and inexpediency of encouraging culture in the sex, — a be- 
lief so rooted in the prejudices of men that in some natures 
it still exists lurking as a subtle poison, unacknowledged 
because publicity in our day would be shame. It is no 
longer respectable to be indifferent to this subject; and 
whenever in any work of reform that stage is reached, the 
victory is already won. The first dawn of this moral revo- 
lution was in Massachusetts, and the civilized world concedes 
the fact by adopting the example. When free education for 
both sexes, as a municipal duty to be enforced by law, be- 
came here the public interpretation of state obligation, the 
finger of transfiguration touched the destiny of woman, nor 
can any reaction ever set it back. Limited for generations 
by the public poverty, it has for generations been increasing 
with the public wealth and the relaxation of ancient preju- 
dice, until a respectable standard of culture is now required 
by law in equal degree for the one sex and the other. The 



270 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

cloud of prejudice has lifted from public opinion, the vision 
of duty has expanded, the scope of legislation has widened, 
and to-day all over the United States the acknowledged 
right of equality in the mental relations of the sexes is a 
part of the atmosphere we breathe. 

In adopting the rule of aiding from the treasury of the 
State the higher seminaries of female education, some of the 
newer States have larger claims to gratitude than our own 
Commonwealth. We may rejoice that in the West, along 
those parallels of latitude which the bracing air of freedom 
and intelligence pervades, where the influences that are to 
control the future of this country are rapidly taking grace 
and culture, government patronage opens its gates to the 
largest development of the daughters. In some of those im- 
perial Commonwealths the doors of State universities are 
thrown wide open to both sexes. I equally regret that 
the past error of Massachusetts, in this respect, cannot now 
be retrieved. While her Legislature, at intervals through 
several generations, made public grants to the colleges for 
boys, it left the daughters alone to the thinner diet of the 
common schools. It may be doubted whether ever again it 
will be a part of our public policy to make grants from the 
treasury to the higher seminaries of either sex, and probably 
henceforth they must rely upon private liberality ; nor am 
I by any means confident that in the enlarged wealth of the 
time this will not be the just policy. It is chiefly observa- 
ble that this kind of legislation should stop precisely at the 
time when the girls' colleges are emerging in divinest array 
from an age of neglect. And since this is likely to be our 
future public policy, I take special pleasure in saying that 
the last act of the Legislature of Massachusetts granting 
money from the treasury to a collegiate institution, was an 
act alike of indemnity and expiation. On a morning in the 
winter of 1867, when it happened to me to be in the executive 
office, I received at the State House the visit of two ladies, the 
one already then a munificent patroness of this institution, and 



THE CENTENNIAL SITUATION OF WOMAN. 271 

the other actively connected with its administration, who 
solicited my co-operation in an endeavor to obtain an act of 
legislative assistance for Mount Holyoke Seminary. I was 
deeply impressed by their plea that the Commonwealth had 
never given a dollar to any female seminary. Eeferring 
them to a few gentlemen in both houses who might greatly 
assist them, it only remained for me to assure them, quite 
in disregard of the proprieties of my office, that if they 
would procure the passage of the bill through the Legislature, 
it should be signed as quickly as I could read it. I can 
sincerely say, with pride for myself but with greater pride 
for Massachusetts, that probably no magistrate ever wrote 
his name with more alacrity than I felt in affixing mine to 
an act which, by the payment of forty thousand dollars out 
of the treasury to this institution, cast over our coat of arms 
a fresh light, the light of justice. 

Nothing in the methods of social progress is more pro- 
pitious than the surrender of the profession of teaching to 
women. For some years after the adoption of the Constitu- 
tion they were ineligible to this office, and if admitted to 
perform its duties in the public schools, I believe, they could 
not by process of law collect their salary. Not only has 
this wrong been removed, but in our day an entire revolu- 
tion has overtaken this occupation. In part for reasons of 
political economy, in part because of a more just estimate 
of their sex as natural educators, women now constitute 
nine tenths of the whole corps of public instructors in the 
State ; they fill the same office in the normal schools, in all 
the higli schools, in all the higher seminaries ; in short, they 
are supreme everywhere in our education, save in the tech- 
nical and classical schools and the colleges. No change so 
broad and radical as this has been witnessed in any other 
field of social science in modern time. For the future, our 
citizenship, our magistracy, our history, is under their hands. 
If we contemplate this vast corps on their several planes of 
power, whether in domestic training or in public instruction, 



272 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

directing the early impressible years as they can be directed 
only in the sacred retirement of home, or by a genius tit for 
the occupation conducting the incitements of the classroom, we 
must acknowledge that the women of this generation are 
performing their part for the preservation of this Govern- 
ment. Some persons are doubtless present, who in their 
walks in Eome have gazed with pride upon the genius of a 
few of their countrywomen, jirojected in the image of marble; 
but I point you to thousands of your countrywomen, in all 
portions of this land, who are moulding human nature in 
the spiritual image, which shall survive when marble shall 
have crumbled. And since this beneficent work has fallen 
into their hands, it is well for our country that their superi- 
ority as educators is especially in the domain of the moral 
sentiment, for never before has our political condition stood 
in greater need of those influences. Whenever a blight 
spreads over the political morals of a people, the remedy has 
to come from the next generation. It is possible only to a 
limited extent to modify the evil in men hackneyed in the 
abuses of public trust ; the hope of purification is chiefly to 
be found in a new blood. It is the memory of ennobling 
instructions which youth carries into manhood, that supplies 
the promise of our free institutions. The high qualities of 
Lord Denman, the soul of honor in every relation he touched, 
were traced to the governess of his boyhood ; and when ad- 
vanced in his career as Lord Chief Justice of England, he 
still related with the simplicity of a child his night dreams 
of Mrs. Barbauld. I look abroad over the fields traversed 
by the graduates of this institution, now rapidly aproaching 
two thousand, and I behold them at their work on the na- 
tional character ; I see them defiling into all the States 
of the Union, infusing the middle ranks of our life with 
gentleness and strength of culture, — instructors, with Lietitia 
Barbauld, inculcating the sentiments which will draw around 
the future citizen the conscious solemnities of responsibility, 
and purify his discharge of private or public trust, — in the 



THE CENTENNIAL SITUATION OF WOMAN. 273 

family, with Miss Sedgwick, gracing domestic duties by the re- 
lief of studies, — with Caroline Herschel, supplementing the 
care of the household with the gaze of the heavens, — in the 
occasional offices of compassion and benevolence as effect- 
ually fulfilling the mission of the Lord, as Dorothea Dix or 
Elizabeth Fry, as Mary Pickard or Sarah Pellatt, — in the 
common lot of existence, by their elevation of the written 
and spoken word, as truly promoting the dignity of their 
own sex and commanding the respect of the other, as if they 
bore the name of Edgeworth or More, of Jameson or Aiken ; 
and I follow this influence through the ever lengtheninfr 
progression of time, until it is lost to sight in the depth 
of ages. 

Such are some of the chief exponents of the benefits 
which the century has brought to the sex. There is a more 
general but not less impressive feature of her advance in 
the respect of this age. In this moral and social eminence 
there is also a higher esteem and homage for her individu- 
ality, for her being, simply as woman, than at any former 
period. Never was there a time before when she was so 
encompassed by spontaneous honor and veneration. More 
conspicuously now than ever before, she is reverenced for 
herself, — because she exists. If it might have been feared 
that her going forth into the ways of commerce and arts and 
many industries would dethrone her from the pedestal on 
which past ages had placed her, experience has shown that 
her divinity is now encircled by a broader homage than those 
ages ever knew. It is ti'ue, this instinctive deference for 
her has always existed, lodging itself in the heart of every 
period, varying with diversities of nations or customs or 
manners, adapting itself to all the revolutions of thought 
which have shaken religions and codes, ever standing out 
as a thing distinct from all other things, — deference for 
woman. It is equally true that this manifests itself in our 
time by acknowledging female ascendency in higher meth- 
ods and on higher levels than existed in the days of Northern 

18 



274 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

invasion, or gallantry of Provence, or self-assertion in revolu- 
tionary Paris. There is no doubt that in the Gothic periods 
women made a great advance as the recipients of an exag- 
gerated yet genuine adoration, but the modern is the higher 
and larger style. If in that time they were shielded by 
gallantry as dependent in their weakness, they are now 
shielded in equality of rights by the sword of the law, by 
the hand of man, by the opinion of society. If they were 
then revered because of their qualities without attainments, 
they are now revered because of their qualities unfolded by 
education. If the ancient chivalry threw its arms around 
them as beings not desecrated by the utilities, the chivalry of 
our day hedges them with the legions of its law and the 
angels of its commerce. If the Troubadours adored them for 
tlie goddesses they were not, Christian men respect them for 
the women they are. If in the ancient joust knights shiv- 
ered their lances for beauties whose wits were invented sev- 
eral centuries afterwards by Walter Scott, modern gentlemen 
would die in earnest for the immortal beauty of womanhood. 
If in the period of Middle-Age romance the higher few 
received those courtesies, the code of modern society raises 
and guards the whole. 

Historically woman is at the acme of her power. The age 
is in full accord with her ; and on whatever ground she steps, 
she commands the sympathy of mankind. Nor to chivalry, 
nor to law, nor to commerce is her place in all hearts to be 
exclusively ascribed. The inspiration of the masters of 
thought has spread through modern literature, and from 
stage to stage has sounded the notes of her progress. The 
mysteries of her being have met their interpretation in tlie 
profound insight and pure conceptions of Milton. Incom- 
parably beyond all others, Shakespeare has uncovered her 
capacities both for good and for evil, the excesses and the limi- 
tations of her nature, the side of her vanity and the side of 
her glory. In comparatively recent years the book-shelves 
have been stockincr with commentaries from both sexes on 



THE CENTENNIAL SFfUATION OF WOMAN. 275 

the female characters of the great dramatist, until Juliet and 
Ophelia, Desdemona and Cordelia, Portia and Beatrice, Lady 
Macbeth and Katharine of Arragon, are familiar as the living. 
His interpretation of her, piercing as the light of the dia- 
mond, is caught up and radiated from every sphere of active 
thought, from the pulpit and the bar, from novels which are 
histories and from histories which are novels, from schools, 
from cottages, from the shops, and his myriad-mind pleads 
everywhere her cause. How deeply he has touched the foun- 
tains of the human heart in all classes, and how closely he has 
brought man into intelligent sympatliy with woman, the 
stage bears daily witness whenever applause runs from seat 
to seat over his grand words in her behalf, for love and 
mercy, for justice and retribution. Addison has been her 
amiable satirist and kindly instructor. Burns still feels the 
chords of the race with her pathos and plaintive love. I for- 
bear to extend the catalogue. Whilst Swift and Pope and 
Johnson, who were incapable of being amiable or just to 
woman, retire from her support, Milton and Shakespeare, Ad- 
dison and Burns, are read by constantly increasing numbers ; 
the nobility and naturalness, the dignity and tenderness, of 
their sentiments, laid at the shrine of her affections and her 
wrongs, have passed into the common mind of this age and 
have become a part of its humane judgment. Over all these 
inspiring influences, which have aided to bring mankind to 
the justice of her relations, the lessons of the Master of our 
holy religion preside and govern, qualifying, exalting, com- 
bining them into a harmonious public opinion. 

One of the conclusions from the discussions of the century 
appears to be the settlement of the question of the intel- 
lectual equality of the sexes. If you ask how it has been 
settled, — by the conclusion that there is no question which 
ever can or ought to be settled at all. If the disputations of 
the last hundred and fifty years over this question could be 
collected, the curiosities of literature would be vastly swollen. 
After bringing the lens of Scotch metaphysics to bear upon it 



276 ADDEESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

Dugald Stewart decided that all intellectual differences are 
the consequence of difference in education, and Lord Jeffrey, 
model in learning and fairness of judgment, inclines in the 
same direction. Other critics equally profound have as posi- 
tively maintained the opposite opinion. A female writer of 
marked acumen and liberal learning, who has made valuable 
contributions to our literature, Mrs. Jameson, expresses the 
opinion that " the intellect of woman bears the same relation 
to that of man as her physical organization ; it is inferior in 
power, and different in kind. In men the intellectual facul- 
ties exist more self-poised and self-directed, more independent 
of the rest of the character, than we find them in women ; 
with whom talent, however predominant, is in much greater 
degree modified by the sympathies and by moral causes." 
The sum total of the general belief of the most enlightened 
of both sexes appears to be, that there is a difference of kind 
in their natural endowments, and that there is for each an 
appropriate field for development and action. I think we 
may agree this morning, that woman is the superior in nice 
perception of minute circumstances, in the force and prompt- 
itude of her sympathy, in the courage of her affections and 
moral sentiments, in all the qualities depending upon excit- 
ability of nerve, in her capacity for noble and devoted 
attachment, in patience, quickness, and tact, and in a talent 
which is not defined by the metaphysicians, and which men 
sometimes find embarrassing to themselves, the gift of second 
sight. I shall leave for you to determine, whether the sterner 
sex does or does not excel in tlie power of close and logical 
reasoning, in the capacity for investigating questions involv- 
ing complex and indeterminate elements, in perseverance 
rather than patience, in concentrated power of attention, in 
sustained reach of combination and generalization, in creative 
force, in breadth of judgment and scope of imagination. To 
what extent education can modify the diversities which exist, 
whatever they may be, it is unnecessary to inquire, since the 
approving judgment of our day has on the whole accepted 



THE CENTENNIAL SITUATION OF WOMAN. 277 

the fact that such diversities do not impair the relative influ- 
ence of either sex, that neither class of forces is higher than 
the other in the scale of mind, and that Loth are essential 
for the greatest success of the race. In the warfare of life 
the cavalry and the artillery must co-operate in the achieve- 
ment of victory. 

It is an interesting feature of this subject, that while meta- 
physicians and partisans have been agitating this question of 
equality of endowments, each sex has in practice uniformly 
recognized the superiority of the other. Women always imi- 
tate men in intellectual display, always take pride in being 
deemed their equals, always receive from their hand the 
wreath of honor with complacency ; men always seek the 
critical approval of women, receive their satire as the very 
edge of truth, care more for the galleries than for the floor, 
and never feel sure of success if their penetrating eye with- 
holds its acknowledgment. The finer qualities pay tribute to 
the coarser ; the higher qualities predominate over the greater. 
This practice does not much proceed from mere gallantry or 
from badinage ; it is the rule of conduct of sincere and 
serious life. It is the triumph of moral power over the intel- 
lectual. This reciprocal recognition of superiority, each sex 
as to the other, is an unerring indication that in ordering the 
operations of the social system divine Providence established 
over it this mystic law. It is the tie which binds men and 
women in the solemn unities of life. It is the happy fiction, 
if you please, it is the moral unreality, under which each sex 
is ever courting an exaggerated estimate of itself from the 
other, — and "goes to the courtship as its pra3'er," — under 
which each sex ever concedes it to the other, and is more 
blessed in giving than in receiving. Under human necessity 
the laws of states confine certain offices of duty to the 
stronger, in no derogation of the right or dignity of the 
weaker ; and in turn, by those subtile and beneficent influ- 
ences which nature gave them, which man would not take 
away if he could, and could not take away if he would, the 



278 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

weaker become the superior, and overshadow alike the law- 
maker and the law. There is a harmonious inequality, which 
is better than the most perfect equality. The great Christian 
lyrist has wrought the mysterious incongruities and contra- 
dictions of the sexes into matchless shape of reconciliation. 
After assigning to the lips of Adam in paradise the strongest 
expressions of his own superiority in mind and inward fac- 
ulties, in accord, he says, with the prime end of nature, he 
allows our progenitor to break forth in another and loftier 
strain : — 

" Yet when I approach 
Her loveliness, so absolute she seems, 
And in herself complete, so well to know 
Her own, that what she wills to do, or say, 
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best. 
All higher knowledge in her presence falls 
Degraded. "Wisdom, in discourse with her. 
Loses, discountenanced, and like folly shows. 
Authority and reason on her wait. 
As one intended first, and not after made 
Occasionally; and to consummate all, 
Greatness of mind, and nobleness, their seat 
Build in her loveliest, and create an awe 
About her, as a guard angelic placed." 

I think the experience of this age has confirmed the 
opinion of former time as to the relation of woman to the 
conduct of public affairs. I am not speaking of the particu- 
lar portion of this subject which is involved in the question 
of her exercise of the right of suffrage. It is my conviction, 
on a review of the past, that as the common judgment of 
both men and women was before adverse to such participa- 
tion in public affairs, the experience of the century has not 
changed that opinion. In my apprehension this conclusion 
is founded in good reason and just sentiment. A most dis- 
criminating female writer, who has not been backward in 
asserting the dignity of her sex, has said that " women, how- 
ever well read in history, never generalize in politics, never 
reason from any broad and general principles, or from past 



THE CENTENNIAL SITUATION OF WOMAN. 279 

eveuts, their causes and their consequences, — but are politi- 
cal through their affections, prejudices, hopes, fears, and 
personal connections." And you will permit me to inquire, 
who ever saw a woman set to work to discuss such questions 
as the proper duties and limitations of legislation, the com- 
plex mischief of certain laws and policies, the causes of 
national wealth, the relations of foreign trade and domestic 
industry, the field of agriculture and manufactures, the finance 
and the currency, the laws of population, the management of 
poverty and mendicity, the theories of taxation, the conse- 
quences of the public debt, and all public matters upon 
which the welfare of a state depends. It is not a sufficient 
answer to this inquiry, to say that she has been kept out of 
the practice of politics, because, while she has never been 
prohibited from the study of civil economy, she has never 
cast the light of reflective wisdom over any one of its fields. 
Women have ranged with free volition over the whole do- 
main of speculative thouglit, and the fact that they have 
either avoided the severities of political economy or have 
added nothing of value to it, is their own voluntary tribute 
to the wisdom of the division of duties under which society 
has so long existed. And distribution of political service 
indifferently among men and women is so suggestive of con- 
fusion, awkwardness, and impossibility of progress in domestic 
life, that the piercing instinct of the female mind very gen- 
erally rejects it. 

This opinion of the sex has become more firmly estab- 
lished by the experiments wliich have been made in tlie 
opposite direction during the century. In the higher circles 
of the society of France, at a time not now remote, the most 
intellectual of its women attempted to participate in direct- 
ing public affairs, and the result has been transmitted to us. 
They wielded a short, brilliant, and fatal power. From their 
boudoirs and drawing-rooms went forth the resultant force 
of wit enforced by beauty and fallacy masked by flattery. 
Policies which desolated the kingdom were stimulated in 



280 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

the salons of Paris, and from the councils of female partisans 
came the orders to shed tlie purest blood of both sexes. The 
eagle eye of Napoleon took the lesson at a glance ; he em- 
ployed the agency of women for their power at intrigue, and 
soignez lesfemmcs were often his ominous words to his departing 
ambassadors. Under the despotic and aristocratic govern- 
ments they have more tliau once undertaken such a share 
in politics, but it has been a service in the interest of diplo- 
macy and intrigue. The example descended to the common 
ranks, and the political female clubs of Paris, numbering many 
thousands of members, even more disorderly than the disorderly 
clubs of men, were finally suppressed by government — for 
cause. It is a subject for gratulation, that in this perversion of 
their nature to incompatible functions both the higher and 
common orders of the sex in the United States have seen no 
inducement to claim the right or imitate the example. We 
cannot fail to behold in contrast the mass of women under 
the older governments and under our own. There has not been 
a more revolting spectacle than the mobs of women run mad 
with politics, in the first French revolution, in London in 1780, 
in Paris again at the close of the last war with Prussia, in wliich 
everything of the possible hideous cast its shadow upon history. 
But, according to the light within them, they moved on the 
lower plane in the same sphere in which their more cultivated 
exemplars moved on the higher plane ; and such will ever be 
the relation of the higher example to the inferior imitation. 
Different has been the conduct of the women of America. 
In the more elevated and educated ranks they have never 
brought their accomplishments and virtues into the arena of 
political turmoil. From the days in which Mrs. Hancock, 
the wife of the President of the Congress, amid the excitements 
of that trying epoch, exemplified the modest}', the dignity, 
and the discretion which John Adams has transmitted to 
us for her memorial, down to our own time, they have 
followed more pure and comely methods of influence. And 
their example, also, has not been without its following. 



THE CENTENNIAL SITUATION OF WOMAN. 281 

Among the whole mass of the women of the United States the 
order of social existence has been exempt from the rude 
display of political action. Amid the passions of our politics 
we too have passed through many mobs, but who ever heard 
of an American woman appearing on that dread theatre in 
her Amazonian armor ? But while they instinctively avoid 
exposing both soul and body to the uncongenial attrition of 
political affairs, they have not failed, in periods of greatest 
excitement, within the pale of their fitness but to farthest 
extent of human benevolence, to discharge the noblest of all 
duties to the state. In the awful period of the late war, 
leaving to man the sterner obligations of patriotism, woman 
was yet in every work of mercy, in the weakened household, 
in sanitary preparation, in the labors of the hospital, in the 
house of prayer, at the burial of the brave. 

I trust we have not yet receded so far from the days of 
Dr. Franklin's benignity and wisdom, that his influence, so 
pre-eminent over the other sex in his lifetime, may not still 
be cherished with tender regard by their successors. In one 
of his letters to a granddaughter he gave this quaint and 
candid advice : " You are very prudent not to engage in 
party disputes. AVomen should not meddle with party pol- 
itics, except in the endeavor to reconcile their husbands, 
brothers, and friends, who happen to be of contrary sides. 
If your sex keep cool, you may be the means of cooling ours 
the sooner, and restoring more speedily that social harmony 
among fellow-citizens which is so desirable after long and 
bitter dissensions." I desire to echo Dr. Franklin's good 
counsel, in the hope that men may continue to feel, for 
another century at least, that in consulting a wife, a mother, 
or a sister on these subjects of excitement, they are appeal- 
ing from their own passions and prejudices, and not to them, 
embodied in a second self I trust that the members of this 
institution will concur with me in wishing far off the day 
when their ranks, like too many of the young men in their 
own schools, shall be swept into the vortex of dispute about 



282 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

public men and public affairs. If, however, there be any 
who look with favor upon such employment of their time, I 
beg leave to ask their listening ear to a pleasantry of Addi- 
son : " There is nothing so bad for the face as party-zeal. 
It gives an ill-natured cast to the eye, and a disagreeable 
sourness to the look ; besides that, it makes the lines too strong, 
and flushes them worse than brandy. I have seen a woman's 
face break out in heats, as she has been talking against a 
great lord, whom she never saw in her life ; and, indeed, I 
never knew a party-woman that kept her beauty for a twelve- 
month. I would therefore advise all my female friends, as 
they value their complexion, to let alone all disputes of this 
nature ; though, at the same time, I would give free liberty 
to all superannuated motherly partisans to be as violent as 
they please, since there will be no danger either of their 
spoiling their faces or of their gaining converts." 

If it be asked, what then is woman's sphere ? tlie answer 
has been already furnished by her own intelligent judgment 
and practice under the best civilization which the world has 
had. The choice has rested with her, and she has not made it 
in doubt or hesitation. She has properly refused to be limited 
or controlled by certain worn-out catch-phrases, of which one 
would shut her up for life as a nurse to the sick-chamber 
and another would consign her to silence as a prude, or to 
seclusion as a nun. She is right in agreeing with Sydney 
Smith, that woman cannot afford to be compassionate from 
eight o'clock in the morning to twelve o'clock at night. The 
modern economies have met her on this ground, and have 
thrown open to her the most respectable, the most delicate, 
and the most responsible occupations ; and she has taken to 
them with an exhilaration that belongs only to the noblest 
nature. She is satisfied, — it is only the inquisitor, still 
ringing the question of her sphere, who is dissatisfied. She 
adheres to the standard by which the graces of her character 
have been measured in tlie advancing ideas of the last half- 
century. It is her choice to regard herself as an integral 



THE CEiNTENNIAL SITUATION OF WOMAN. 283 

part of the plan of social and domestic order, out of wliicli 
it is no wish of hers to be agitated and jostled into arenas 
alien to her nature. It is within her own consciousness that 
woman is the core and centre of a nation of homes ; it is 
within her own knowledge that history, literature, and re- 
ligion show the advancement of a nation to be in its homes. 
This is a trite doctrine, but not triter than the solar sys- 
tem or the geological formations, nor any the less important. 
After trial, the family institution is the world's method ; 
without the appropriate distribution of its duties, that must 
dissolve away ; and therefore whatever weakens her empire 
there, puts in peril the whole vast fabric. She is the adjuster 
of society, the standard of its moral sanctions and its purest 
sentiments, the beginning and the end of its natural and ac- 
quired aesthetics. It is in the daily and smaller habitudes of 
life that all classes find the average of their stimulations and 
pleasures ; and her presence there is inspiration, her direction 
there is better than law and good as a perpetual song. She 
is the ingenious manager of the national manners, which we 
underestimate. "Manners," said Burke, — "manners are of 
more importance than laws. The law touches us but here 
and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, 
corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a 
constant, steady, uniform, irreversible operation, like that of 
the air we breathe. They give the whole form and color to 
our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals, they 
supply them, or they destroy them." I may add, that woman 
is their queen and their law-giver. In no country so much 
as in ours is it needed to bear in mind that according to her 
quality will be their quality. In no other country is it so 
essential that her influence over the manners of the people 
be assisted by adding to her natural refinement the effects of 
education, by preserving her born decorum from the tarnish 
of whatever is unfeminine. 

This anniversary fitly takes the lesson that the lieroic 
element of woman is in moral sentiment. Whatever of the 



284 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

renown of women of the century now survives, comes mostly 
from that domain. Their place in the judgments of civiliza- 
tion has been determined by the rule which the author of 
their being established as the pledge of the security of soci- 
ety. This rule is often relaxed by men in judging their own 
sex, but it is observed both by men and women in judging 
the other sex. The renown of eminent men often partakes 
of the glare of great achievement, while rnoral obliquities are 
condoned or overlooked. Women" with a juster religious 
sense judge their own sex by the moral test, and their de- 
cision is taken up by the voice of the ages. The genius of 
Napoleon still captures the admiration of mankind, in spite 
of his crimes ; but the Semiramis of the North, Catherine of 
Eussia, of consummate genius, liaving led an empire out of 
mediocrity into the first places of power, is seldom mentioned 
without a shudder. Of two modern queens of nations, not 
unequal in natural and acquired talent, the successor of the 
patroness of the discoverer of a new world lives in general 
contempt, while she of our mother country is descending the 
years in the light of benignant fame. The heroism of woman 
is a moral heroism ; it is a principle and not a passion. Her 
courage is of duty and not of ambition, and her passive forti- 
tude is lodged among the proverbs of the world. The maid 
of Orleans is triumphant as a historical character, because 
she kept her innocence and rode under a banner spiritually 
consecrated. When the two emperors, and the marshals of 
France, and the charge of the six hundred shall have been 
forgotten, the name of Florence Nightingale will still travel 
on to the posterities. When mankind shall not much re- 
member the woman of genius in diplomacy and arms, who 
held the ascendency of Germany, her weaker daughter of 
France will still move all hearts by the sublime meekness 
and divine forgiveness which made immortal two years of 
martyrdom. Of all that female array of Paris, brilliant in 
intellect, which made even an epoch of blood almost attrac- 
tive, the memorials which remain after ninety years are the 



THE CENTENNIAL SITUATION OF WOMAN. 285 

memorials of Christian fortitude in suffering. The gay salon 
of Madame Roland, which controlled an administration, is 
passing into oblivion, and her own name lives only in the 
heroic invocation which she uttered for all time, as the char- 
iot bearing her to the scaffold wheeled under the statue of 
Liberty. In all times and in all spheres the glory of woman- 
hood is in the moral sentiments. 

The limitations of this occasion compel me to draw these 
remarks to a close. There are many things one would desire 
to say, which must be omitted. It only remains for me, with 
the parting word, to remind those whom I have the honor to 
address, that enlarged responsibilities come always with wid- 
ening spheres of opportunity. If the freedom of civil rights 
has opened to the sex the gates of a new world, they are to 
enter not only to possess it, but to organize and embellish it. 
If equality of privilege and honor in all industry is before 
them, the universal law of decorum follows there, not only 
to protect them, but to be itself preserved. If almost the 
whole education of the race has come under their charge, let 
them be mindful that the hand moulding the image of the 
age be set to the finest touches of art under the purest inspi- 
rations of spirit. If in conceded homage and deference they 
occupy an eminence heretofore unknown, let them acknowl- 
edge it with the fragrant courtesy of their nature. Above 
all, I would counsel them against being misled into that 
false theory, the worst of our time, which implies antagonism 
between the sexes. Women are not a class ; they are co- 
ordinate factors in the divine problem of immortal being ; they 
are elements in the systems of the world, out of which they 
can neither be decomposed, nor be resolved into independency 
of existence. The accord between the sexes is the accord of 
mutual supremacy and of mutual allegiance. 

" The woman's cause is man's. Thej^ rise or sink 
Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free : 
For she that out of Letlie scales with man 
The shining steps of Nature, shares with man 



286 ADDKESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal, 
Stays all the fair young planet in her hands — 
If she be small, slight-natured, miserable, 
How shall men grow ? 

let her make herself her own 

To give or keep, to live and learn and be 

All that not harms distinctive womanhood. 

For woman is not undeveloped man. 

But diverse: could we make her as the man. 

Sweet love were slain : his dearest bond is this, 

Not like to like, but like in difference : 

Yet in the long years liker must they grow; 

The man be more of woman, she of man ; 

He gain in sweetness and in moral height. 

Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world ; 

She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, 

Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind ; 

Till at the last she set herself to man. 

Like perfect music unto noble words. 

Then comes the statelier Eden back to men; 

Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm. 

Then springs the crowning race of humankind." 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 

ADDRESS AT THE UNVEILING OF THE STATUE IN NEW YORK, NOV. 20, 1880. 

I EECALL, as if it were yesterday, that forty-five years ago, 
in one of the vacations of a schoolboy visiting New York 
for the first time, I strayed into the Merchants' Exchange 
on Wall Street. It was the hour on 'change. From the 
confusion of tongues all about me my attention was at once 
attracted to the marble image which stood there, divinity of 
the place. The light falling from above gave to it the 
warmth of life, and brought out its features in the beauty 
and grace of intellectual supremacy. I needed not to be told 
it was the statue of Alexander Hamilton. Amid that din 
of merchants, to whom those lips spoke only through the 
inspiration of art, the mind of a stranger wandered back\vard 
over half a century to the memorable convention on the 
Hudson, where 

" His voice drew audience still as night 
Or summer's noontide air," — 

where he spoke the words which gave to New York her com- 
merce and her merchants, which gave this great State to the 
Union, which gave the Union to the family of nations. A 
few months afterwards that marble crumbled in the fire 
which swept over the lower end of your city, and until now 
has not been reproduced. In the mean time, in Massachu- 
setts, where Hamilton in his lifetime had so many and fore- 
most friends, where his memory is still cherished with a 
fondness not surpassed by that which is felt for any other, the 



288 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

public spirit of a private citizen has erected his statue in the 
choicest avenue of Boston ; thus anticipating for the capital 
of New England the honor and distinction which New York 
now rightfully appropriates in a special sense to herself. 
Not to you alone, but to the citizens of other States it may 
well become a subject of felicitation, that the filial piety and 
patriotic enterprise of a son of this illustrious man to-day 
crowns a lengthened life by kindly enabling us to unite 
with him in paying these honors to his father. 

The fond interest with which Hamilton was regarded 
while living, quite apart from other public men of his time, 
found extraordinary expression at his death and has survived 
to this day. His career has much of a charm like that of 
romance. A fascination attached to his life and character, 
which, though it was felt by the large throng of his friends, 
was yet so subtile and delicate as in part to elude the pen 
of history and biography. Amiable beyond the usual lot of 
great men, with a frankness that was artless, a temper that 
was always open and never concealed, a warmth of feeling 
which averaged a troj)ical birth with a northern residence, a 
sincerity that did honor to a Huguenot origin, he excited 
such extended and lasting friendships as are rarely grouped 
around a man of public affairs. These qualities were set in 
him with a manliness which began with his youth, and were 
accompanied with that lofty sense of personal honor which 
always wins among mankind. He retained the honor of a 
soldier upon every field of his civil fame. Exhibiting these 
qualities in his public life from the start, and breaking upon 
the attention of his countrymen at an age when most persons 
are just beginning to master their early study, he awakened 
among the supreme men of the day an admiration and affec- 
tion which after three-quarters of a century still lingers as a 
tradition, like the mellow glow upon a distant horizon. The 
attachment of his contemporaries was spontaneous, it strength- 
ened with every fresh development of his power, it over- 
looked his infirmities, it sympathized with him in his dreams 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 289 

of glory. Eminent rivals were regarded with such respect 
as attended William Pitt, while Hamilton excited such 
affection added to respect as followed Charles James Fox. 
The correspondence which has come down to us abounds 
with this impression, and reveals how Meade and Tilghman, 
how Laurens and Harrison, how Sedgwick and Sherman, 
how all those who knew him best, manifested in their relations 
the ardor and devotion which they would have bestowed 
only upon a noble nature charged with magnetic attrac- 
tions. La Fayette upon all occasions addressed him in such 
terms as belong only to the largest confidence of the warmest 
friendship. The great heart of Washington went out to him 
and stayed by him, from the first year in which he knew 
him till death separated them. The last letter from Mount 
Vernon was written to Hamilton. And when he fell there 
was, from New Hampshire to the Carolinas, an effusion of 
universal grief, heightened by keenest sense of personal loss, 
which in all that was tender and impressive was second 
only to that which followed the death of Washington. Thou- 
sands in every State gave expression to their feelings in the 
words of Fisher Ames : " My heart penetrated with the re- 
membrance of Hamilton grows liquid as I write, and I 
could pour it out like water." In dedicating this memorial 
the citizens of New York are paying their tribute to a char- 
acter who interested the admiration and love of their fathers 
as no man before or since has done, even of all the eminent 
sons of this imperial State. 

Of the statesmen of the last hundred years I cannot at 
the moment recall one, save the second Pitt, who resembled 
him in so early display of intellectual powers, so steadily 
increasing in volume and richness as to disappoint expec- 
tation only by their continuous growth to the end. It is 
this prematureness, which surprised an age familiar with 
wise and great men, which eighty years after the close of 
his public life still attracts us as a revelation overshadowing 
all the ordinary laws of mental development. We scarcely 

19 



290 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

know that he had any youth. He rose to conspicuous ob- 
servation, he rose to fame in this city, in the morning of 
his days. Only recently landed on this shore, but having 
already given his heart to his new home, we find him at 
seventeen in the Great Fields engaged in public speech on 
non-importation, exciting that rapt attention which continued 
to fasten upon him more closely and more closely still for 
thirty years till his life was over. At eighteen, he wrote 
those papers for the public press which brought this discord- 
ant colony nearer to its final purpose, which were quite the 
wonder of the day as to who the author might be, which 
now make a volume of a hundred and fifty pages of striking 
maturity and completeness. A year later he threw off the 
incognito of an anonymous writer and appeared under his 
own name as commander of artillery, instructing the assem- 
bly of this province in the necessity of supply and discipline. 
We behold him at twenty taken into the military family of 
'Washington, who judged men as no one else knew so well 
how to judge them, and intrusted with duties most arduous 
and delicate. His correspondence for three years in that 
office is itself a moimment. You will find there letters 
written at the age of twenty which cover all questions of 
war, which explain and unfold the necessity of that Fabian 
policy which history has since accepted as one of the pillars 
of the- military renown of Washington. At twenty-three, 
a young man in camp and having been in no position of 
civil experience, he wrote the remarkable letter to Duane, 
which mastered the problem of arms, of finance, of political 
powers, of the gaping defects of the Confederation, of the 
dread need of an executive ministry. He then scented as 
by intuition our later union. At twenty-four, when gloom 
hung over the land, he prepared the still more remarkable 
paper for Eobert Morris on the financial situation and rem- 
ed}^, exhausting the subject of commerce, of taxation, of a 
National Bank, and shadowing forth the relief of the lessons 
of history to the distress of the States. We behold him 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 291 

after Yorktown returned at twenty-five to New York and 
serving a term in tlie Confederate Congress, where he left 
deep and lasting impressions ; in the Constitutional Conven- 
tion at thirty, dividing the time between his service there 
and his professional duties here ; at thirty-one, the chief 
representative of this city in the Convention at Pough- 
keepsie, and by his individual prowess carrying the decision 
of that body, so vital to the success of the Union and so 
imperial with results ; at thirty-three the most important 
member of the first Cabinet, the organizing spirit of this 
Government, conceiving, building up a national system of 
credit and finance ; and through a period of four years the 
counsellor and guide of Washington, preparing ojiinions 
w^hich traversed ground before unexplored and which fill vol- 
umes that have stood the severe test of time. I know of noth- 
ing in any quarter like these amazing labors and results, 
which were crowded into the brief space between the age of 
twenty and of thirty-three. " I doubt," said Rufus Choate, " if 
Pascal, if Grotius, if Caesar, if Napoleon, had so early in life 
revealed powers vaster and maturer." 

And in this short period, at intervals snatched from the 
public labors, he had established his fame as a jurist. While 
he was illustrating in camp what Washington declared to 
John Adams that Hamilton possessed, — "qualities essential to 
a great military character," — while he was acting the part of 
first advocate for the adoption of the Constitution, while he 
was acting the part of first organizer and methodizer of the 
government of the United States, he found time to become 
also first of lawyers. Sheathing his sword at Yorktown, he 
came back here to the law, to the amenities of citizenship, 
to the delights of domestic life. He was then but twenty- 
four years of age. During the next nine years, and the nine 
years after retiring from the Cabinet, he rose on the broad 
field of a national reputation to a rank not second to any 
lawyer of the United States. What a public life that must 
have been from 1775 to 1800, of which three fifths was de- 



292 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

voted to official and two fifths to private station, which found 
him at the opening of this century at the head of the roll 
of constitutional lawyers, of financiers, of statesmen, and of 
publicists. In office or out of office he was at the head of 
the roll of that party, not less brilliant than patriotic, which 
gave the first prestige of durability and power to the Govern- 
ment. We all know how Ames and Cabot, Pickering and 
Otis, Morris and Bayard, Charles Carroll and John Jay, Theo- 
dore Sedgwick and John Marshall, turned to him as the mas- 
ter spirit of the high political fellowship which surrounded 
the Constitution through its first twelve years. We know 
how great must have been his reputation and ascendency, 
since his foes as well as his friends ascribed to him so large 
a share in the policies, the measures, and personal directions 
of the first two Olympiads of the Government. Truly did 
they confirm the language of Jefferson, that Hamilton was a 
colossus to his party, without numbers a host within himself. 
Truly did they, one and all, alike by their friendly and their 
unfriendly acknowledgment of his leadership, manifest their 
concurrence with the Father of his Country, that the judg- 
ment of Hamilton was intuitively great. He was a partisan 
only as he was a patriot. He passed through much of oppo- 
sition and animosity, but no disappointment or displeasure 
moved him from devotion to the public interest as the con- 
stant magnet of his heart. " This in my eyes is sacred." His 
discussion and argument was copious, exhaustive, and vast. 
He was a master of style, a model for all who seek to know 
the art of enlightening and convincing. " In his speech wis- 
dom blended her authority with her charms." It is pleasing 
to read his argument, a clear flow of thought, without strain 
or conceit, broadening and expanding over the farthest scope 
of the question in hand, in language easy, natural, and trans- 
parent, massive with simplicity and flexible with grace, — 

" Though deep, yet clear ; though gentle, yet not dull ; 
Strong without rage ; without o'erflowing full." 



ALEXANDEK HAMILTON. 293 

Bom amid the influences of a foreign tongue, he possessed a 
style of English, at seventeen, which surpassed the heads of 
the schools. His letter from camp on the Hudson, giving to 
his friend Laurens an elaborate and familiar narrative of the 
affair of Major Andre, contained everything which history 
has since recorded, in language of simplicity, sweetness, and 
pathos, which makes it one of the curiosities of our Revolu- 
tionary literature. 

In two eventful stages of our annals, distinct though in- 
timately connected, Hamilton proved himself a chief pillar 
of the public security. In token of the part he bore in 
establishing the Constitution of the United States, New York 
should preserve and decorate his monument while the Union 
lasts. Although your State by a majority of its delegates 
opposed the Constitution in the great Convention of '87, 
and actually retired in disgust from that body before the 
final action, he remained to uphold the hands of Wash- 
ington and Madison, and at the close implored the members to 
unite with him in affixing their signatures to the instrument. 
Not without hesitation as to some of its features, he had yet 
supported it by the whole force of his reasoning and elo- 
quence. And when that scene was closed and the Constitu- 
tion was sent out into the States for their approval, one peril 
having been overcome only to open the way for another of 
greater violence and more doubtful issue, he advanced to the 
struggle in the full action of all his intellectual powers. Here 
in New York, where the chances were two to one against the 
Government, he took this whole undertaking upon his own 
shoulders. It was the task of convincing a reluctant people 
by the highest attribute of human nature, by the force of 
pure reason. He used the instrumentality of the written and 
spoken word, each in its highest form. Of the serial papers. 
The Federalist, which w-ere read in every State, more than 
three quarters were the product solely of his pen, are still 
cited as a legal classic in courts and senates, and known 
wherever our language is spoken. Seventy-five years ago the 



294 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

Edinhurgh Review, calling the attention of Europe to these 
papers of Hamilton, pronounced them " a work which exhib- 
ited an extent and precision of information, a profundity of 
research, and an acuteness of understanding, which would 
have done honor to the most illustrious statesmen of ancient 
or modern times." These labors reached their acme in his 
service as delegate from this city in the State Convention at 
Poughkeepsie, which was to determine whether ours should 
be a nation and a government. In the discussions of that 
body, of whicli a large majority of the members had assembled 
with sentiments hostile to the Constitution, he exerted him- 
self with every variety of argument, with every form of elo- 
quence, with every art and grace of persuasion, which the 
gravity of the occasion demanded, and which his marvellous 
endowments enabled him to supply. At length the assembly, 
which in its earlier stages would have dashed to the ground 
the last hope of a national life, reversed its purpose and cast 
the weight of New York into the scale for the Union. Your 
own great Chancellor Kent, who had then but recently 
opened his office in Poughkeepsie, who was a witness of the 
forces which acted on that historic scene, afterwards declared 
that the decision of New York must forever be attributed to 
the influence of Alexander Hamilton. 

And now, after ninety years of life under this Constitution, 
we are enabled to look back to the part he acted, to the inter- 
pretation he gave of the public necessities, and to pronounce 
that experience has vindicated his judgment. Every one of 
the excitements which have been called crises since the 
Virginia resolutions of '98, seeming at the time of their 
occurrence to be a test of the strength of the Govern- 
ment, has illustrated the acuteness and breadth of his dis- 
cernment as a civic interpreter. He forecast the nullification 
of 1832. "It is inseparable from the disposition of bodies 
who have a constitutional power of resistance, to examine 
the merits of a law." Daniel Webster in the Senate and 
Andrew Jackson in the Executive office repeated the doctrine 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 295 

of Hamilton. The present occasion affords neither time nor 
desire to enter upon enough of detail to meet the cavils of 
those who cannot speak well of him, — if any such there be, 
— but it is fit to recall to-day in a general sense the impor- 
tance of his lessons. He was the champion, he was the father, 
of Nationalism against Statism. The honor and power of 
the States he sought neither to disparage nor to obscure. In 
a notable speech in the New York Convention he pictured 
the expanding glory of the States within their sphere, and of 
the Union as the central security for all. He saw national 
success only in national sovereignty, under which national 
laws should operate on individuals as directly as the laws of 
the States. The denial of his doctrine, the theory of Statism, 
for two generations having control of the Government, brought 
many trials upon the people of this nation, and at length 
brought them face to face into the presence of a revolt which 
threatened the overthrow of their Government. That crisis 
now past and that danger now escaped, it is wisdom as well 
as justice to remember our obligations to our prophets and 
our guides. To the instructions of Hamilton, which lodged 
in the minds of three generations some just conceptions of 
this nation, clothed with full powers to develop and embellish 
all its parts in peace', clothed with full powers to defend and 
save itself against the levy of any of its parts in war, — to 
the instructions of Webster, wdio, when Nationalism and Stat- 
ism presented their rival pretensions under questions which 
menaced the peace of the Union, delineated to the people 
with new and yet clearer light the constitutional division 
and distribution of powers, — to Alexander Hamilton and to 
Daniel Webster, the citizens of this country are largely in- 
debted for the political education and political faith which 
enabled them to stand, and endure, and prevail, when the 
confiict of arms was thrust upon them. 

His later and more conspicuous service to this nationality, 
which will ever associate his name with our Government, was 
given to its first administration. To aid him in imparting 



296 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

life to a government which had come to his hands only as 
yet a body of barren formulas and theories to be developed, 
applied, and enforced, — to summon into being as by the stroke 
of the enchanter a system of national credit without which 
the heroic attainment of fifteen previous years would have 
passed away as an illusion, — Washington called to his side a 
young man of thirty-three years. The work committed to 
him was the work of creation. From chaos he was to evoke 
methods and systems. In the presence of a vast public debt, 
the heritage of war, of unascertained and crippled resources, 
of a moral sense of obligation which had already begun to 
degenerate under the pressure of distress, of the discordant 
jealousies of the States long wedded to the worship of their 
own divinities, of men not now united as in the council 
of 76 but divided by sectional rivalry and personal am- 
bition, he was to create and organize a body of public 
credit, supported by public revenue, which, if it were to be 
good for anything, must place the new nation in the confi- 
dence of the world. We honor the head of the Treasury in 
our own time if he so adjusts the liabilities and resources 
of a great and afiiuent nation of fifty millions as to give it 
an equality of credit with old and tried governments. But 
ninety years ago, with but three millions of inhabitants, with- 
out any system of taxation and revenue, without knowledge 
of the public capacities or possibilities, surrounded by a dis- 
united council, Hamilton was called to fit to such a situation 
a newly created sense of honor in the nation, a newly created 
system for funding an immense debt, of revenue internal and 
external so pledged as to challenge the faith of the world, of 
a fiscal agency which should melt thirteen separate systems 
into one of national unity and energy. It was the era of tlie 
beginning of a great nation, and it is one of the providences 
of our history that the era produced a genius equal to the 
exigency. He laid the foundations of our national honor in 
his own consciousness. American credit, never since doubted 
on the globe, was prefigured and provided in his own capa- 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 297 

cious mind. So long as that credit shall continue untarnished 
the remembrance of him who conceived and established it 
will continue to awaken a glow in the heart of every Ameri- 
can citizen, and the words of his eulogy spoken by Webster 
will meet a response from every generous mind : " He smote 
the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams 
of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of 
the public credit, and it sprang upon its feet. The fabled 
birth of Minerva, from the brain of Jove, was hardly more 
sudden or more perfect than the financial system of the 
United States, as it burst from the conceptions of Alexander 
Hamilton." 

This extraordinary man was wafted upon our shore at a 
time which was rich in strong and original men, such as are 
apt to be the product of a period deeply thonglitful and revo- 
lutionary. He had none of the advantage of his peers of 
native birth, none of the inspiration of their early youth, and 
none of the promise which sprang to them from the ties 
of American kindred. But the endowments of his nature 
quickly made good to him a fulness of compensation, and in 
seventeen years from his landing at your wharf, an obscure 
mercantile correspondent, there was no reputation on this 
continent which threw a shadow over his. The strangely and 
harmoniously blended currents of his Huguenot and Scottish 
descent, warmed in the tropics and tempered under these 
northern skies, supplied a quickening sensibility and enthu- 
siasm to his ambition and his patriotism. Throughout a 
career which, through an excess of frankness that verged on 
imprudence, stirred the asperity of rivals, he held to the last 
the confidence of the public, the friendship of the best men 
in all the States ; and the pang of national loss is still recalled 
at the mention of his name. 



THE CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS 
CONSTITUTION. 

PREPARED AT THE REQUEST OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI- 
QUARIAN SOCIETY, AND READ AT THE SEMI-ANNUAL MEETING OF THE 
SOCIETY, IN BOSTON, APRIL 27, 1881. 

The Colony of Massachusetts had hardly secured a firm 
foothold here as a permanent settlement, exercising the 
functions of government, when the colonists began to make 
a demand for a formula of securities or liberties, the equiva- 
lent of which is nearly expressed by our term " constitution." 
The Englishman, removed to a home in Massachusetts Bay, 
passed at once under the elation and expansion of a con- 
scious freeman. The records of that time reveal to us, as 
clearly as any history can disclose the consciousness of a 
generation of men two centuries and a half after their exist- 
ence, that the freshly arrived immigrant felt the traditional 
restraints of his European life falling from him, and was 
consciously invested with new dignity and hope, with new 
resolve and power. Within four years after the coming of 
Winthrop the settlers became impatient that their liberties 
should be registered in clearly defined form and ordinance. 
This impatience manifested itself as early as 1634 in palpa- 
ble proceedings, which aimed at having their rights reduced 
to the letter and form which should limit even the magistrates 
who had their highest confidence. Having already obtained 
the right of popular representation by deputies, they secured 
in 1635 the appointment of a commission, as we should now 
call it, which should " frame a body of grounds of laws, in 
resemblance to Magna Charta, which should be received for 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 299 

fundamental laws." This commission, several times changed 
as to its members, finally secured in 1641 the enactment of 
the code of a hundred laws, called the Body of Liberties, of 
which a copy was discovered in the old Athenaeum in Boston 
by Mr. Francis C. Gray about sixty years ago. This first 
American code of public and private securities, the Magna 
Charta of that day, may in a certain sense be termed the 
first Constitution of this Commonwealth ; or rather, reading 
the articles in the light of all which has happened since, I 
should venture to call them the Massachusetts Institutes. A 
perusal of this code cannot fail to vindicate the claim of its 
author, Nathaniel Ward, minister of the town of Ipswich, to 
our grateful remembrance for having brought to America 
great benefits from his study and practice of law in England ; 
and I am sure that every thoughtful reader of this Puritan 
pandect will cordially concur in the opinion, which forty 
years ago Mr. Gray pronounced before the Massachusetts 
Historical Society, that it manifests a quality of wisdom, 
equity, and public adaptation far in advance of the time in 
which it was written. To this opinion I will add, that after 
allowance for that portion of these Institutes which was 
derived from the Pentateuch, and which must be accepted 
as the reflected sentiment of a theocracy which is scarcely 
appreciable in our own time, there are other parts of this 
constitutional breviate which bear the marks of bold and 
statesmanlike originality fit for the affairs of a complete 
modern commonwealth. That they may be regarded as hav- 
ing been the forecasting of the coming state is attested by 
some of them having since been incorporated into our present 
Constitution. Although these Fundamentals were adopted 
for only a term of three years, yet the more important of 
them passed into the volume of enduring colonial legislation, 
and aided largely in the gradual framing of the beneficent 
fabric which now overshadows us with the safety which every- 
body feels, but which not everybody traces to its simple and 
august besinninir. 



300 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

During the one hundred and forty-four years which inter- 
vened between the founding of the colony and the first deci- 
sive act of Gage at Salem in 1774, which heralded a new 
era, the people of Massachusetts continued under the govern- 
ment of the charters. But during the whole of this period 
there was a constant though varying accumulation and cohe- 
sion of the elements of a sovereign and free state. Ours was 
in many respects a free republic from the start, and our 
provincial annals abound in prophetic signs of coming inde- 
pendence. The spirit of this independence was never in 
profound sleep, from the first and singular fortifying of the 
harbor, five years after the advent, to the day of the first levy 
of arms in the next century. In many of those years kings 
vi^ere so deeply engrossed in home pleasures and home poli- 
tics, and in many other years the Puritans were so deeply 
engrossed in their own civil and religious strifes, that the 
reader of events is often diverted from observing the under- 
current which was steadily bearing the state towards the only 
ultimate result. This province was at no time without 
statesmen grounded in the learning of the English Consti- 
tution, and in all the progressive stages of the rising local 
republic their discernment was fully equal to every changing 
situation. In that school of trial they were practising them- 
selves for their purpose more rapidly than they knew, and 
were practising a more profound policy than was known by 
their kings. Their purpose as freemen was frequently held 
in reserve by a masterly suppression, and their assurance as 
prophets was frequently held in check by a masterly diplo- 
macy. Under Cromwell the Massachusetts Puritan moved in 
straight lines towards independence, under Charles restored 
the Massachusetts Puritan was politic as a Machiavel or a 
Talleyrand ; but under every reign he was constantly ad- 
vancing in the grooves of destiny, sometimes a little tortuous 
and sometimes very direct, always towards his freedom. Such 
drift and purpose must sometime reach its end, and when a 
king so resolute and obstinate as Georse the Third sat on the 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 301 

throne, antl a Puritan so resolute and obstinate as Samuel 
Adams directed Massachusetts, the end could no longer be 
postponed. 

The adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 
introduced in the several States new forms of government 
which were without precedent or example in the world. 
When colonial dependency was annulled and autonomy took 
its place in thirteen republics, a new method of formulating 
the will of states came into use and became henceforth 
distinctively The American System. Written constitutions, 
framed by the people for their own government, and made 
unalterable even by themselves save in most indubitable 
and solemn manner, accepted as the only source of power 
to all administrations and absolute criteria of security to all 
subjects, have now been in use here during a century and 
have set us apart from the other peoples of the globe. The 
adoption of the American plan was a logical necessity. 
The dissolution of dependency cast Americans upon their 
own capacity for government, with no guidance except their 
knowledge of history and their own shackled experience. 
They had grown up in the knowledge of the muniments of 
the British Constitution, but the elemental principles of that 
constitution for public and private liberty lay spread over 
five centuries and a half since Magna Charta, had never had 
any existence as a code, and had neither the unity of one 
fixed interpretation by continuous generations nor any sanc- 
tion of immutability. Since English constitutional liberties 
had been in their origin concessions from the crown, given 
in times of exceptional popular awakening, even the repe- 
tition of the demand and concession from reign to reicrn had 
scarcely given the ease of repose to the mind of the subject. 
According to the authority of Professor Creasy, in his work 
on the English Constitution, the terms of Magna Charta 
itself have needed to be confirmed by kings and parliaments 
upwards of thirty times. Even in the present day of estab- 
lished construction, in which the English Constitution has 



302 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

attained a complete solidity of crystallization, if we seek to 
find its rise and growth we have to read with collating care 
the histories of Hallam and May, extending over a period 
of nearly five hundred years ; and after all the reading we 
come to no such muniments as those of our own written 
Constitution, founded in a universally acknowledged social 
compact, " the whole people covenanting with each citizen 
aud each citizen covenanting with the whole people ; " so 
unshackled in outline, so solid in framework, so solemn in 
sanction, as to be beyond every fear short of revolution. The 
term " unconstitutional " as it is used in England bears a sicr- 
nification altogether different from its meaning in Massachu- 
setts. " By the term ' unconstitutional,' " says Hallam, " as 
distinguislied from the term 'illegal,' I mean a novelty -of 
much importance, tending to endanger the establislied laws," 
— a definition which scarcely reaches the incisiveness of a 
decree of unconstitutionality pronounced by the highest ju- 
dicial tribunal of an American state. It is true that many 
of the constitutional guaranties which the people of this 
State a century ago ingrafted upon their form of government 
had been inherited by them, and had become so sacred by 
tradition and use that no tribunal would ever after have 
been likely to deny them ; but for their double assurance 
they resolved to re-define them, to reduce them to a system 
and a code, to add many things which could have had no 
existence under a monarchy, and to throw about them safe- 
guards of their own creation. 

This necessity for a written constitution was reinforced 
by another consideration. The advance in modern thought 
on government had at that time reached one important con- 
clusion on this side of the water never before fully recognized 
on the other, nor indeed recognized there now to anything 
like the extent of the American opinion. I refer to the 
strict division of government into co-ordinate branches, each 
exclusive of the others, nowhere else expressed as in the 
American constitutions. There is no one feature of our 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 303 

government which so clearly insures the security of public 
or private rights as the setting the judicial power solemnly 
apart as a governing organ of the constitution, beyond the 
reach of the arm of the executive and legislature ; and this 
was a stage of adv^ancement which had not been made in a de- 
gree of perfection anywhere before the American Eevolution. 
The men of Massachusetts saw the necessity of making this 
eminent consecration of the judiciary certain and enduring 
by a fundamental liberty recorded in written and unmistak- 
able words. They had seen in the parent country the ulti- 
mate decision on judicial appeal lodged in one of the houses 
of the legislature, and they saw no way of closing the door 
upon this exposure to abuse, but by a written constitution 
which should shut off and protect a pure and fearless judi- 
ciary against encroachment from any quarter. Englishmen 
themselves have learned to regard the American plan, under 
which each co-ordinate power is protected from every other 
power by registered constitutional language, as the conserva- 
tor of every right and interest, of every class and condition ; 
and during their excitement over the Eeform Bill fifty years 
ago, when the upper house barely escaped being swamped 
by tlie crown, their conservative statesmen did not hesitate 
to acknowledge the superior safety of the written constitu- 
tions of our States. 

The statesmen of Virginia have justly boasted that theirs 
was the first written constitution, formed by a free and sov- 
ereign state, which the world has possessed. The State con- 
vention from which this instrument emanated assembled 
early in May, 1776, several weeks before the subject of 
recommending new governments in the States was acted on 
by the Continental Congress at Philadelphia, and that ancient 
State may rightfully wear in its coronet tliis high historical 
distinction. No other State has the power, no other State has 
the desire, to dispute this impressive priority in the noblest 
group of governments of modern time. But the truth of this 
history is only fully completed in the statement that nearly 



304 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

two years before that time Massachusetts had initiated pro- 
ceedings which had the same purpose in view, and had 
ah'eady set up self-government over its domain. On the 17th 
of June, 1774, the date of practical independence in Massa- 
chusetts, the last day of any other government and the first 
day of its own government on its own soil, the House of 
Assembly, in session at Salem, with its door locked against 
the Governor, while the decree of its dissolution was read on 
the stairs outside, provided for a provincial House of Eepre- 
sentatives to take the place of the General Court which was 
never again to be convened. Massachusetts was launched, 
somewhat unceremoniously to be sure, but none the less cer- 
tainly, the first autonomous republic in America ; and Samuel 
Adams was the master and guide of the event. Before any 
counsel could come from Philadelphia, because it was before 
there was any Congress at Philadelphia to give counsel, he 
commanded the situation at Salem on that historical day, and 
he first in America turned the key on monarchy. The history 
of self-government in this Commonwealth thus starts with 
the fact that its people for the space of a whole year were 
without any direction beyond that of this provincial Assembly 
and of the Committee of Safety, and that all the while, with- 
out any regular executive, and in the presence of hostile 
arms, they maintained civil order and brought no scandal on 
liberty or justice. This provincial Assembly, stimulated to 
take another step forward by the affair at Lexington and 
Concord of April 19, proceeded on May 16, 1775, under the 
counsel of General Warren, to ask the advice of the Congress 
at Philadelphia upon the best metliod of exercising the 
powers of civil government ; on June 9 the Congress ad- 
vised that the colony, accepting the singular liypothesis that 
the office of governor Avas to be treated as vacant, should 
clothe a newly chosen council w-ith the executive power 
" until a governor of his Majesty's appointment would con- 
sent to govern according to its charter ; " and only ten days 
afterwards, on June 19, a call was made for the election of a 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 305 

provincial assembly, which only thirty days later, on July 
19, convened in Watertown. In their anxiety for the main- 
tenance of the civil functions of society the people moved 
with a rapidity and quietness which illustrated their earnest- 
ness of purpose and their solemn sense of responsibility. 
This body at once elected a new set of councillors to act in 
the double capacity of legislative and executive administra- 
tion, with James Bowdoin as their president ; thus planting 
a provisional government upon a fiction of la\v which was 
the ultimate as yet reached by the wisdom at Philadelphia, 
and upon an anomalous confusion of the organs of govern- 
ment which was destined to continue four years longer. 
Although civil process and appointments were issued in the 
name of the king, the commission of John Adams as Chief 
Justice being conferred in that style, the public endured this 
anomaly with patience until May of 1776. On the first 
day of that month, now as before acting in advance of the 
Congress at Philadelphia, the processes and commissions of 
Massachusetts were ordered by its leaders to run in the name 
of its "government and people," in lieu of that of the king. 
This was two weeks before John Adams succeeded, on the 
15th of May, in carrying through the Continental Congress 
his celebrated resolution for the suppression of every kind of 
authority of the crown, and advising the several colonies to 
establish their own governments ; which resolution itself was 
adopted two weeks before the question of declaring indepen- 
dence came to its sublime decision, and which he proudly 
named the cutting of the Gordian knot. Now for the first 
time our own legislative assembly took the preliminary steps 
for forming a State constitution. Entering upon the subject in 
June, 1776, the Assembly decided on the 17th day of Septem- 
ber to advise the people to choose their deputies to the next 
General Court with full power to frame a constitution ; and 
this advice was repeated May 5, in 1777. Although in the 
interim after the dissolution of this Assembly the people in 
several public conventions, notably in the county of Worcester, 

20 



306 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

and in many of their town meetings, had insisted upon the 
calling of a special convention solely for so grave a work 
as the framing of a new government, yet a majority of the 
representatives came together fully authorized to enter upon 
this great business ; a joint committee of the Council and 
Assembly agreed upon a constitution, which was approved by 
the two bodies, February 28, 1778, and was sent out in March 
for popular ratification. It is one of the omissions in our 
annals that the proceedings of this committee were never 
given to the public inspection. 

But this constitution, which required the assent of two 
thirds of those voting on it to secure its acceptance, received 
only two thousand of the twelve thousand votes which w^ere 
returned ; partly perhaps because of its imperfect delineation 
and division of government powers ; in part no doubt because 
it was not accompanied by a Declaration of Rights, on which 
at that time the popular heart was strongly set ; and chiefly 
because of the general conviction that our organic framework 
of government could properly come only from a convention 
chosen solely and sacredly for that one piece of work. This 
first form of a constitution, contrasted with the orderly and 
stately instrument afterwards framed and adopted, exhibits 
most glaring defects, whilst some of its incongruities reviewed 
in the light of the subsequent experience of a century would 
now fail to command respect. The Governor and Lieutenant- 
Governor were to have " a seat and a voice in the Senate ; " 
the Governor was to be president of the Senate ; and in the 
distribution of the functional powers of government "the 
Governor and Senate " are spoken of in a manner correspond- 
ing to our present municipal phraseology of " the Mayor and 
Aldermen," in strange mingling of the executive and legisla- 
tive departments. The instrument contained no provision for 
an executive council, and the high power of executive pardon 
was lodged with the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and 
Speaker of the House of Representatives, or "either two of 
them." Senators for each district were to be chosen by a 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 307 

vote of the whole people of the State. All persons not of the 
Protestant religion were made ineligible to either the execu- 
tive, legislative, or judicial orders of the government. The 
dignity and independence of the executive were very inade- 
quately provided. It is unnecessary to pursue the subject 
with further detail. The vote of the people showed that they 
deemed the structure of this constitution an utter failure, and 
only one-sixth part of the ballots were given in favor of its 
acceptance. A remarkable demonstration in the canvass cf 
its merits was made by a convention of many towns of the 
county of Essex held at Ipswich in April, 1778, which 
appointed a committee to report upon the true principles of 
government required for the public safety. At an adjourned 
meeting of the convention in the following month this com- 
mittee reported an exhaustive treatise on the whole subject, 
which became known as " the Essex Eesult." This argument, 
understood to be the production of Theophilus Parsons, after- 
wards the eminent Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial 
Court, was marked by the intense grasp and comprehensive 
generalization, by the power of statement and of clearly 
drawn distinctions, which in later years distinguished his 
published opinions, and it must have contributed essentially 
to the defeat of the proposed constitution. And the people 
of the State were still without an established government. 

Mr. Charles Francis Adams has advanced the opinion 
" that interests had already grown up, in the period of inter- 
regnum, adverse to the establishment of any more permanent 
government;" and he finds color for this suggestion in the 
fact that when the Legislature in the next year, 1779, took 
steps for another trial for a new government, it put to the 
people the composite question, first, whether it was their will 
to have a new form of government, and second, wliether tliey 
would authorize their representatives to call a convention for 
the sole purpose of framing one. Nor is this suggestion 
by any means without extraneous support. INIassachusetts 
was moving on its daily life under the momentum of tradi- 



308 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

tional observance of law and order whicli had grown up 
under the charters, which had now been modified in practice 
to a degree that answered the needs of all functional routine 
through four years of experience ; and the conservative force 
of popular inertia, even amid j)ublic crises, is attested by the 
fact that a very large proportion of the citizens made no 
return of any action whatever upon the preliminary questions 
in both attempts for a constitution. Ehode Island lived on 
under its charter sixty years after the resolution of the Con- 
tinental Congress had suppressed it, and it remained a mooted 
question in Connecticut until the year 1818 whether its peo- 
ple had any constitution or not. But the return of the votes 
upon the question referred to them showed that a majority 
of our people favored the call of a convention, and on the 
17th day of June, 1779, precepts were sent out for the elec- 
tion of delegates, who should assemble in the following Sep- 
tember. Accidentally the conjuncture of dates links the 
beginning and the end of this high enterprise with a day 
forever set apart in the Western world by the opening battle 
of the Eevolution. On the 17th day of June, 1774, the rep- 
resentatives of the State took at Salem the first step for self- 
government ; on the same day in the next year every retreat 
was cut off by bloodshed at Charlestown ; and on the same 
day five years later their successors ordered the completion 
of the work. As the constitution now to be created did not 
go into effect until October, 1780, it appears that from the 
eventful day at Salem more than six years were to elapse 
before the Commonwealth should come into possession of a 
genuine government. It is a tribute which history will ever 
pay to the heroic energies of that generation of men, to their 
capacity for government, to their innate reverence for law 
and authority, to their strong and enduring sense of national- 
ity, to their love of liberty moderated by their love of justice, 
that they carried on a free republic through all that period 
by their unaided self-denial and self-control ; that, rather than 
act hastily in a matter so grave to themselves and their 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 309 

posterity, they endured for six years the uncertainties and 
iucousistencies of an illusive and baseless fabric of govern- 
ment; that they deemed the benefits of a perfect constitution 
within their own borders might come only too soon, if attained 
by abating one jot or tittle of devotion and sacrifice to the 
common cause of all the States. 

The convention whicli framed the Constitution under 
which we now live assembled in the meeting-house in Cam- 
bridge, September 1, 1779, and after seven days took a 
recess till October 28, having first committed the task of 
preparation to a committee of thirty ; it re-assembled on the 
28th of October, and on the 11th of November took a further 
recess till January 5, 1780. On that day it met in the Old 
State House in Boston, but by reason of the bad travelling 
over the State continued without an efficient quorum till the 
27th ; on which day the labor was resumed and went on 
without further interruption until it was completed on the 
2d day of March. Of this body, which comprised, as I 
make out from the journal, three hundred and twelve dele- 
gates, James Bowdoin was elected president. Of the exalted 
character of this assembly no one can hesitate to concur in 
the opinion expressed by Mr. Eobert C. Winthrop in his 
admirable address on the services of Governor Bowdoin, that 
it contained " as great a number of men of learning, talents, 
and patriotism as had ever been convened here at any earlier 
period ; " and I venture to add that it has not since been 
equalled by any public body in the State, unless possibly by 
the next convention, which met in 1820. John Adams, Sam- 
uel Adams, Hancock, Lowell, Parsons, Cabot, Gorham, Sulli- 
van, Lincoln, Paine, Gushing, Strong, are but a few of the 
eminent names which appear on its roll. The journal of its 
proceedings is exceedingly unmethodical and unsatisfactory, 
and by reason of the lack of reporters at that time we have 
scarcely any knowledge of the debates. The committee of 
thirty, to whom was referred the work of preparing a plan 
and form of government, intrusted this task to a sub- 



310 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

committee consisting of Bowdoin and the two Adamses, who 
in turn committed the responsible labor to John Adams alone. 
His draught of the framework was substantially as a whole 
adopted by the sub-committee, and afterwards by the general 
committee, slightly altered, was propounded to tlie convention. 
The draught of Mr. Adams, compared with the form in 
which the Constitution was finally adopted, appears to have 
received several amendments by the convention ; but the 
result of their labors was chiefly as he had blocked it out, and 
by every rightful title he must be declared the father of our 
Constitution. Judge Lowell said, in his eulogy on Bowdoin, 
that " it was owing to the hints which he occasionally gave, 
and the part which he took with the committee, that some 
of the most admired sections in the Constitution appeared ; " 
but in comparing John Adams's draught with the ultimate 
result one cannot easily discover any sufficient supply from 
other sources to derogate from his title of chief authorship. 
And we owe it to the truth of history to say, that whilst 
the galaxy of names already mentioned warrants the belief 
that the absence of any one of these delegates could not 
have endangered the prospect of a model constitutional gov- 
ernment in Massachusetts, the cliieftainship in that creative 
work must always be assigned to John Adams. 

And if he had left no other claim to the gratitude of the 
Commonwealth, this alone would complete his title. As 
constitutionalist and publicist all other men of his day came 
at long interval behind him. Madison and Hamilton were 
a development of the ten years which followed the full 
manifestation of his powers. Beyond all his associates in 
mastery of the whole subject of government, grasping and 
applying the lessons of historical studies with a prehensile 
power at that time unprecedented on this continent, and 
adding to them the original conceptions of a mind of the 
highest order, he proved of all his contemporaries fittest for 
constitutional architecture. Having discerned five years be- 
fore, in advance of everybody, the solution of independence 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 311 

in directing the colonies to establish local governments, 
he became doctrinaire to the delegates at Philadelphia. 
In the confusion and chaos of thought relating to these 
subjects which brooded over their minds, his counsel was 
sought by delegates from North Carolina, from Virginia, 
from New Jersey, to each of whose delegations he furnished 
formulas of State government ; and when he came to the 
front in the preparation of a constitution for his own State, 
his mind was already stored for the emergency. His share 
in framing our own government, and his subsequent writings 
in defence of the general system adopted by the American 
States, in refutation of the theories of M. Turgot, this defence 
being published just in time to bear upon the question 
of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, 
furnish sufficient excuse, if indeed excuse were needed, for his 
boastful declaration, found in the Warren correspondence 
recently published by the Historical Society: "I made a 
constitution for Massachusetts, which finally made the Con- 
stitution of the United States." 

Under his direction the convention made a Declaration of 
Eights to precede the framework, almost wholly the work 
of his hand with the exception of the third article, which he 
did not attempt to perfect. These are the axioms which 
are to give direction in future interpretations. Of the 
eleven original States which made new constitutions, — for 
Ehode Island and Connecticut continued under their char- 
ters, the former until 1842, and the latter until 1818, — 
six adopted these Bills of Eights, and five left them out. 
That these declarations of general rights and liberties, most 
carefully and solemnly stated, and called Bills of Eights, are 
not to be regarded as exclusively suggestive of that period 
of transition from the old dispensation to the new, is shown 
by the fact that of the twenty-five new States admitted since 
the Eevolution twenty-three have adopted these formularies ; 
and of the whole present number of thirty-eight States there 
are still but five which have not accompanied their constitu- 



312 ADDKESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

tions with something- like a Bill of Eights. Upon this sub- 
ject the people of Massachusetts were peculiarly sensitive, 
and the want of a Bill of Eights is believed to have had a 
leading influence in causing the rejection of the first pro- 
posed constitution. Our ancestors deemed it of first impor- 
tance to make, with every solemnity, declaration of certain 
fixed principles of reason adapted to the sphere of govern- 
ment, certain abstract theories of natural or civil rights 
of man under the social compact, as safeguards necessary 
to immutable liberty. Other sections of the written instru- 
ment, other provisions of law, are the outworks ; these are 
the citadel. Secret approaches by violence, or corruption, 
or other degeneracy, may span the moat and scale the outer 
walls of government, but the life of constitutional Liberty 
is HERE, and will " not but by annihilating die." The conclu- 
sion of disputed principles, derived out of the usurpations 
and resistances of past centuries, is here registered in a 
single paragraph. It is but a small body of words, mere 
"glittering generalities," but every word glitters as a flaming 
sword of warning and of w^ard to the generations. Good 
words are great things with a free people. Seven words, 
accordiug to Parsons and Shaw and Gray, abolished slavery 
in Massachusetts. "These three words," said Chatham to 
the Lords, " nullus liber homo, are worth all the classics." The 
journal of the Convention of 1780, barren as it is of any- 
thing dramatic, shows that the masters of the period resolved 
to follow after the Commons of 1688, who gave the word of 
halt to the Lords in settling the crown upon a new dynasty 
until a bill of fundamental liberties had first been assented 
to. And the earliest motion of business in our own conven- 
tion related to the Declaration. 

In all these formulas of rights adopted by the several 
States, there is a general resemblance of substance and 
phraseology, but it by no means follows that the first in 
time was literally progenitor of the common affinity of 
thought whicli pervaded them all. Undoubtedly the Bill 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 313 

of Rights of Virginia, which was the first promulgated, was in 
several particulars largely copied into the others, and by its 
priority in time, as well as by its excellence for a model, it 
has laid three generations under tribute of admiration. It 
was almost solely the production of George Mason, one 
of the sainted heroes in the history of American constitu- 
tional government. Four times since that day Virginia 
has adopted new constitutions, but, excepting the addition 
of two or three articles made necessary in 1870 as results of 
the Civil War, the original work of Mason has stood and 
now stands, after the lapse of one hundred and five years, 
as it came from his hands. The Massachusetts Declaration 
is more extended and enunciates more in detail the inves- 
titure of the liberties of the citizen-subject ; and though I 
must unavoidably be suspected of bias, I am free to express 
the opinion that, as a whole, it is superior to eveiy other 
similar form in existence, for its comprehensive projecting 
of the eclectic lessons of history over the future of a new 
commonwealth, for its repeated inculcation of the duties 
of religion and education as the primary agencies of civilized 
states, and for its own simple and solid literature. With 
the exception of the third article it is the work of Mr. 
Adams, though in the convention it took on considerable 
changes in the grouping and the phraseology. It would be 
difficult to find among the English landmarks of right, in 
Magna Charta, in the Petition of Eight, in the Habeas 
Corpus, in the Bill of Eights of 1688, any public or private 
security which, though here modified to fit the modern 
situation, is not as well stated in this all-comprising Declara- 
tion. In the annals of English legislation we often come 
upon the historian's phrase — " encroachment upon consti- 
tutional principles" — whilst to learn what the principle is 
that was encroached upon, one must be well read in five 
centuries of kings and parliaments, and accept perhaps at 
last an interpretation from varying schools; but in the 
simple and elemental aphorisms of the Massachusetts Bill of 



314 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

Eights there is for many of the questions of constitutional 
encroachment the assurance of speedy and indisputable 
solution. In the eleventh and twelfth articles, protecting 
personal liberty and property, which Mr. Hallam sums up 
as covering the two main rights of civil society, we have 
repeated the thirty-ninth and fortieth articles of the funda- 
mentals of Magna Charta with more circumstantial defini- 
tion, but not without some loss of the Gothic strength and 
grandeur of those ever-memorable sections. The thirtieth 
and concluding article, defining the separation and protec- 
tion of each one of the three departments of government 
from the other two, which was reduced to its present form 
by changing Mr. Adams's grouping, has not its superior in 
the terminology of modern constitutions ; and its success in 
expressing the leading thought he aimed to impress upon 
our Constitution is one of the choice felicities of the whole 
body of the Declaration. Mr. Eufus Choate, speaking of this 
clause, once said : " I never read without a tlirill of sublime 
emotion the concluding words of the Bill of Eights, — 'to 
the end this may be a government of laws, and not of men.' " 
With the change of only a single article the entire thirty 
sections have stood the test of a hundred years, and they 
still challenge the same tender observance and care from the 
present generation, which Lord Coke claimed for the best 
chapter of Magna Charta : "As the gold refiner will not out 
of the dust, shreds, or shreds of gold, let pass the least crumb, 
in respect of the excellency of the metal, so ought not the 
reader to pass any syllable of this law, in respect of the 
excellency of the matter." 

There are some lialf-dozen of these articles, promulgating 
the supreme and fundamental principles which form the 
groundwork of free government, which are substantially 
copies from the Declarations of Virginia and Pennsylvania. 
But since Pennsylvania copied after Virginia, to the last- 
mentioned must be accorded the historical honors. John 
Adams was perfectly familiar w4th every circumstance and 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 315 

detail of the history of the proceedings in both of those 
States. He himself said that the Bill of Eights of Pennsyl- 
vania was taken almost verbatim from that of Virginia, wliicli 
was made and published several weeks before; and in con- 
versation with M. Marbois in June, 1779, just before he came 
home to find himself elected a delegate to our convention, he 
gave the names of the four men who framed the Pennsyl- 
vania Declaration. Much has been said and written in our 
local historical circles about the authorshij) of the Massa- 
chusetts famous first article, "All men are born free and 
equal," etc. ; but it would seem the product of all these 
inquiries and speculations must lie at last in the simple con- 
clusion, that this section has come to us in the sole personal 
draught of Mr. Adams, and that he in turn had before liim 
the same in the original as it came from Virginia. Tliis is 
one of the conclusions established by Mr. Charles Deane in a 
recent paper published by the Historical Society. The record 
ought to be conclusive. But it would be quite unphilosoph- 
ical to suppose that the primordial conception of the idea of 
the congenital freedom and equality of men belongs exclu- 
sively to any one of these forefathers. Not to George Mason, 
nor to Thomas Jefferson, nor to John Adams, do we owe an 
inheritance of this thought. It was in the air of that day. 
It is said there are climates of opinion ; and I may add there 
are epidemics of phrase. From time far back there have 
been periods of the public consciousness of the rights of man, 
and it would be difficult to find a time wlien human nature 
has not been conscious of its rights ; and these rights have 
found expression in one epoch only to be paraphrased after 
long interval in a following epoch. The central thought of 
the twelfth article of the Massachusetts Bill of Eiglits, ex- 
pressed by Mr. Adams in 1779, may be seen as well expressed 
by Nathaniel Ward in the first article of the Body of Liberties 
in 1641, and it was set forth with a strength superior to both 
in the thirty-ninth article of Magna Charta of 1215. These 
are not inherited rights ; they come to us from our Creator. 



316 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

As to concrete form they may be traced to an origin among 
the customs of the English people and the English barons, 
and as for their phraseology in expression it is a matter 
rather of curiosity than of utility whether we take rest 
from our inquiries in Locke or Sidney, in Eilmer or Bellar- 
mine. 

There is a curious coincidence in the conduct of George 
Mason and John Adams of their respective Bills of Eights 
relating to the subject of religion, and in the public results 
which flowed from that conduct. Mr. Mason reported, in his 
sixteenth article, toleration for all forms of religion, when 
Episcopacy was, so to speak, the state religion of Yiiginia. 
The youthful James Madison, then making the first step in a 
brilliant and beneficent career, contested the language, and 
obtained an amendment predicated on the natural right of all 
men to the free exercise of religion, excluding the idea of 
toleration. This action resulted in the speedy legislation 
which put an end to the advantage of any one sect of Chris- 
tians over another, and left the whole domain of religious 
thought in Virginia without a trace of compulsion or re- 
straint. Mr. Adams assented to a compulsory support of 
religious worship, reported in the third article of our Declara- 
tion, when Congregationalism was, so to speak, the state 
religion of Massachusetts, though he disclaimed jDersonal 
responsibility for the article; and this article, subsequently 
made even more narrow and stringent by the convention, 
enforced a religious compulsion upon the people of Massa- 
chusetts which it took half a century afterwards to repeal. 

Following the Declaration of Eights came the plan or 
frame of government. On this field Mr. Adams had the 
opportunity to apply, in clear and enduring formulary, his 
matured conceptions of a government fit for a free republic, 
which he summarized in the provision for three organs of 
governing power, a legislature, an executive, and a judiciary. 
Five years earlier, in his conferences with public men at 
Philadelphia, he had met with a quite common preference for 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 317 

one sole legislative assembly, which should absorb all func- 
tions of government, itself legislating and itself also selecting 
the executive and judicial agencies. This principle was 
adopted by Pennsylvania in its constitution of 1776, which 
remained in force till 1790, after the Constitution of the 
United States had been ratified ; and a similar form of gov- 
ernment was created by Georgia in 1777 and continued until 
1789. Though no other of the thirteen States accepted this 
theory, it has been made evident that in 1775 and 1776 it 
had a strong support in high quarters. Dr. Franklin favored 
it, and according to the authority of Mr. Adams, his colleagues. 
Gushing, Paine, and Samuel Adams, favored it, though no 
evidence appears that they adhered to such opinion when 
called to act in the Gonvention of 1780. He distinctly states 
that when the subject of recommending the setting up of 
state governments was before Gongress in 1775, it seemed to 
him most natural for that body to agree upon a form of state 
government and send it out to all the States for their adoption ; 
but, he says, " I dared not make such a motion because I 
knew that every one of my friends, and all of those who were 
most zealous for assuming governments, had at that time no 
idea of any other government but a contemptible legislature 
in one assembly, with connnittees for executive magistrates 
and judges." This was very properly termed an unbalanced 
government, and such a theory, whether fresh from France or 
acclimated here, he opposed with great vigor in his reply to 
the disquisitions of M. Turgot. He would set up the tliree 
bulwarks of the English Gonstitution, king, lords, and com- 
mons, modified in the form of governor, assembly, and senate, 
adding an isolated and absolutely independent judiciary, 
without the British imperfection which then made the upper 
house a depositary of judicial appeal. As far back as Janu- 
ary, 1776, five months before the action of Virginia, six 
months before the action of Pennsylvania, and before any one 
of the colonies had taken up the subject for deliberation, 
when invited by the colonial legislature of North Garolina to 



318 ADDEESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

give them his views on government, he unfolded his system 
in a letter to John Penn in language which he afterwards 
repeated in framing the Constitution of Massachusetts ; the 
same separation of the executive from the legislature, the 
same balance of dual legislative houses, the same great bar- 
riers thrown up around the judiciary. The legal literature of 
this country does not furnish a more impressive statement of 
the necessity of an elevated judicial organ in the government, 
of the method for obtaining it, and of the guards which 
should surround and protect it, than the following passage 
which I quote at length from this letter as a motto for the 
people of the State in all time to come : — 

" The stability of government, in all its branches, the morals of 
the people, and every other blessing of society and social institu- 
tions, depend so much upon an able and impartial administration 
of justice, that the judicial power should be separated from the 
legislative and executive, and independent upon both ; the judges 
shoidd be men of experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, 
invincible patience, unruffled calmness, and indefatigable applica- 
tion ; their minds should not be distracted with complicated, jar- 
ring interests ; they should not be dependent on any man or body 
of men ; they should lean to none, be subservient to none, nor 
more complaisant to one than another. To this end, they should 
hold estates for life in their offices ; or, in other words, their com- 
missions should be during good behavior, and their salaries ascer- 
tained and established by law." 

It is not singular that Xorth Carolina, to which State 
these sentiments were addressed, in its first constitution, in 
1776, ordered the appointment of its higher judges to be 
made during good behavior, and that this provision con- 
tinued undisturbed through ninety-two years, down to the 
Convention of 1868, which convened under a call issued by 
a major-general of the army of the United States. It is 
not singular that these sentiments were accepted in a similar 
provision of the first constitutions of nine of the eleven 
States which framed new governments, though many of 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 319 

them have since taken a wide departure from the principle. 
And least of all is it singular that the same sentiments were 
reijistered in the oro;anic law of our own Commonwealth, 
which has enjoyed the fruitage of them through a whole 
century. The philosophy of the master was first directed 
to this subject when the British Parliament provided that 
the salaries of the colonial judges of Massachusetts might 
be paid by the king, and he then aroused the attention of 
the colony to scent the first approach of encroachment upon 
the independence of the judiciary. 

The framework of the Constitution as it came from the 
hands of the committee of thirty underwent but few changes 
in the substance. Mr. Adams advocated investing the ex- 
ecutive with the power of an absolute and unalterable nega- 
tive upon the laws, which was changed to a qualified veto by 
the convention. Of the eleven State constitutions originally 
adopted, Massachusetts alone accepted this doctrine in its 
modern form ; New York lodging the power in a joint coun- 
cil of the Governor, Chancellor, and two Supreme Judges, 
South Carolina sanctioning it for but two years, while all the 
other States refused admittance to the principle. Mr. Adams, 
having been called away from the convention upon his mis- 
sion abroad, was not in attendance when his form of absolute 
executive power of veto was changed to the qualified form, but 
he wrote from Amsterdam on the 2d of October, 1780, that 
the Massachusetts Constitution, then publishing in the public 
papers of Europe, was received with general favor, and that 
this particular provision met with European approval and 
received also his own assent. The same measure of the veto 
power was afterwards incorporated into the Constitution of 
the United States, and though its exercise in periods of party 
excitement has been frequently assailed, and the principle 
itself has been threatened with repeal, it has made its way 
into most of the State governments and may now be re- 
garded as a part of the American system. Whilst this State 
was almost alone in its original adoption, the example has 



320 ADDKESSES OF ALEXANDER II. BULLOCK. 

been followed by other States, until now only three of the 
old thirteen are without it, and of the whole number of 
States thirty have incorporated it in their governments, 
leaving but eight that disown it. For illustrating the desire 
of our ancestors for a government clothing the governor 
with full and independent powers, I may mention that in 
many of the towns the people voted against accepting those 
sections which seemed to them deficient in the strong execu- 
tive prerogatives necessary for the time. The appointment 
of militia ofiicers, lodged by tlie committee's report in the ex- 
ecutive, was by the convention changed to election by the com- 
panies or otherwise, and though deemed an important change 
by the author this has caused no trouble in practical opera- 
tion. The material alterations from tlie committee's report 
were so few and inconsiderable that I will not follow out the 
topic. 

In filling up the outline of the framework to attain the 
comprehensive purpose of three grand, distinctive, and co- 
ordinate organs of governing sovereignty, balancing and 
checking each other, yet protecting and serving each other, 
the analogies of the English system and the colonial cus- 
toms and laws of a century and a half were retained and 
modified by the access of new ideas. The king, the Lords 
and Commons, became our Governor, Senate, and House of 
Eepresentatives, modified by our situation, but not essen- 
tially changed in elementary principles. Great Britain has 
been termed a republic with a permanent executive, of which 
last feature our system was left clear by universal consent. 
The British judicial life-tenure and the removal of judges 
by address were retained as they had come from William 
and Mary. The confusion of legislative, executive, and 
judicial functions involved in the Lord Chancellor being a 
politician of the Cabinet, and in the Lords being a court of 
appeal, were wisely rejected from our system ; the Gov- 
ernor's Council bore analogy to the Privy Council of Eng- 
land, but was freed at once from the incompatibilities which 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 321 

had grown up under the charter by which executive and 
legislative prerogatives were illogically mingled ; the ex- 
pression of all legislative power under the term of " the 
General Court " was old as Winthrop's administration under 
the charter ; the choice of a House of Eepresentatives was 
prescriptive from the earliest days of the colony in 1632, 
when the levy of taxes by the magistrates led to resistance ; 
the Senate came from the ancient Assistants, being now 
stripped of executive and judicial authority ; the check of 
the two liouses upon each other dates backward to the civil 
strife which arose from the impounding of the colonial stray ; 
the right of town representation in the Assembly had its 
origin in that early time when but eight towns lay about 
Boston, as a crescent filling with the destiny of the future 
Commonwealth ; the two sessions of the General Court were 
descended from the year 1636; the requirement of local 
residence of the Eepresentative came of the conduct of some 
recusant Bostoniaus who, in Phipps's government in 1694, 
held seats for country towns, after the manner of the British 
Parliament, to be rid of whom the Governor's party passed 
the Eesident Act, now become the general practice of Amer- 
ica ; the restriction of suffrage was an English and colonial 
inheritance ; compulsory taxation for compulsory religious 
worship lingered longest and last of the relics of the Puritan 
period, in wliich the idea of a perfect church and the idea 
of a perfect commonwealth were inseparable. I will not 
pursue tlie thought of the sources of derivative supply to the 
Constitution, since I shall have to touch upon some of them 
in speaking of the changes which the century has made in 
this venerable instrument; but one subject, to which was 
assigned pre-eminent importance, cannot be passed over by 
any citizen who seeks to find in government one of the chief 
fountains of public virtue and stability. 

The second section of chapter fifth, relating to " the en- 
couragement of literature," etc., is a distinguishing feature 
of the Massachusetts Constitution. The earlier provisions 

21 



322 ADDEESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

in the governments of other States for education were 
meagre and unworthy. In most of them there was no 
injunction whatever relating to this subject, and in the few 
M'hich noticed the matter at all, with a single exception, the 
only inculcation of the kind was degraded by the remark- 
able precaution of requiring "instruction of youth at low 
prices," a phrase used in at least three of these constitu- 
tions. The treatment given by the following section to this 
duty of government raises tlie subject to a plane of elevation 
fitly occupied by a State which established a university and 
a system of public schools in the infancy of its settlement. 
It has stood through a century without the change of a 
syllable, and it deserves to be cited at length at this starting- 
point of the second century under the Constitution : — 

"Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally 
among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation 
of their rights and liberties, and as these depend on spreading the 
opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of 
the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall 
be the duty of legislators and magistrates, in all future periods of 
this Commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature and the 
sciences, and all seminaries of them; especially the University at 
Cambridge, public schools and grammar schools in the towns ; to 
encourage private societies and public institutions, rewards and 
immunities for the promotion of agricidture, arts, sciences, com- 
merce, trades, manufactures, and a natural history of the country ; 
to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and gen- 
eral benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality', 
honesty and punctuality in their dealings, sincerity, good humor, 
and all social affections and generous sentiments among the 
people." 

The incorporation into the Constitution of this concise 
and unique summary of the higher obligations of govern- 
ment covering the whole domain of general and special 
education, of ethical and social sentiment, of all the humani- 
ties and benignities necessary to the best attainable social 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 323 

condition, was many steps in advance of every constitu- 
tional provision hitherto known, and was original and with- 
out a precedent. This episode in constitutional precepts 
at once made a deep impression upon the public mind. In 
their answer to the first message of Governor Hancock the 
two houses of the Legislature quoted largely from this now 
celebrated section, and gave assurance, for themselves and 
their successors, of a faithful practice of the precepts. I 
need not say how truly legislation has followed this organic 
instruction, in grants from the public domain and from the 
treasury to colleges, academies, and the free schools through 
three generations ; in developing the capacity of the soil ; 
in building up a system of public charities and reformatories 
of which the outlines for models are visited from afar ; nor 
can I fail in my observation to trace back to this source of 
inspiration somewhat of the endurance, patience, and en- 
couragement which has sustained a Howe, a Mann, a Sears, 
all our high workmen and benefactors in the interests of 
philanthropy and education. The unfolding of that narra- 
tive would be too large for the present occasion. Mr. 
Charles Francis Adams, in his fourth volume of the works 
of his ancestor, has made public the curious private history 
of this epitome of the moral duties of government. The 
author was in Europe when this section was voted on by 
the convention, and he felt apprehensive lest tlie injunction 
to cultivate " good humor " among the people might be 
struck out by the delegates. It happened singularly enough 
that this section was copied into the Constitution of New 
Hampshire, adopted in 1784, and again in its frame of gov- 
ernment of 1792, where it now stands, in each instance 
with the "good humor" left out. The author was also 
solicitous lest the " natural history " might be rejected by 
the convention. His own amusing account of the origin of 
this phrase of constitutional duty, traceable to the interest 
he took in a certain collection of American birds and insects 
he visited at Xorwalk, Connecticut, on his journeys to and 



324 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

from tlie Continental Congress, and afterwards in similar 
collections in Paris, rises to the height of forecast and 
prophecy when considered with the illustrations of our sub- 
sequent history. The collection at Norwalk was suggestive 
of results which he probably then little apprehended, for in 
carrying out this provision of the Constitution Massachu- 
setts has passed beyond all other American States in devel- 
oping this department of "natural history." To illustrate 
this I need only mention, among the works published under 
authority of the Legislature, the reports on the fishes, rep- 
tiles, and birds of Massachusetts, the first two written by 
Dr. Storer, and the last by W. B. 0. Peabody ; the reports 
on our herbaceous plants and quadrupeds, the former by 
Chester Dewey, the latter by Ebenezer Emmons ; the report 
on insects injurious to vegetation, by Dr. Harris ; the report 
on our iuvertel)rata, by Gould and Biune}^ ; the great work 
of geological survey, by Hitchcock ; a report on the trees 
and shrubs natural to our forests, by George B. Emerson ; 
the munificent endowments by the State of the Society of 
Natural History and the Institute of Technology ; and last, 
but by no means least, its generous contribution to the 
broad foundation and subsequent support of the IMuseum of 
Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, in which the Common- 
wealth may be said to have entered into partnership of fame 
with the illustrious scientist whose name will forever be 
associated with the institution. 

On the 2d of March, 1780, the finishing touches hav- 
ing been put to the Constitution, it was finally adopted 
by the convention and ordered to be submitted to the 
people for their judgment, and the delegates adjourned to 
meet in the Brattle Street Meeting-house on the 7th of 
June, to ascertain and declare the result. Although the 
instrument made the suffrage dependent on a property 
qualification in the future elections of State ofiicers, yet it 
had been provided that in the vote upon the adoption 
of the Constitution itself all free male inhabitants, twenty- 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 325 

one years old, might cast their ballot. Upon re-assembling 
and counting the votes upon all the propositions the dele- 
gates declared the entire Constitution to have been adopted. 
The form of government of Massachusetts under which its 
present population, rapidly nearing two million souls, enjoy 
a degree of comfort and contentment not surpassed by the 
same number elsewhere on the globe, was " ordained by the 
people," — using the language of John Quincy Adams, — 
"that is to say, by more than two thirds of about fifteen thou- 
sand persons who voted upon it, out of a population of three 
hundred and fifty thousand, or one vote for every thirty- 
five souls." On the 25th day of October, the first elected 
chief magistrate. Governor Hancock, took the oath of office 
in the presence of the two houses of the Legislature in 
the Old State House, proclamation being made from the 
balcony by the Secretary and repeated by the Sheriff of 
Suffolk; and we are assured that "joy was diffused through 
the countenances of the citizens," that three companies 
paraded State Street, that volleys were fired, and salvos of 
cannon from the castle and Fort Hill and on board the ship- 
ping in the harbor. At the services which followed in the 
" Old Brick Meeting-house " Dr. Cooper preached a sermon 
from Jeremiah : " And their congregation shall be estab- 
lished before me ; and their nobles shall be of themselves ; 
and their governor shall proceed from the midst of them." 
After which the executive and the members of tlie two 
houses were escorted to Faneuil Hall, in which a feast with 
thirteen toasts completed the simple and frugal ceremonies 
of inaugurating a new government and a new age for the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 

During the century wdiich has since elapsed the three 
branches of the government and the people themselves have 
in the main acted in good faith towards their form of govern- 
ment ; and the steadiness and intelligence which have marked 
these mutual relations reflect equal honor upon the wise pro- 
visions of the Constitution and upon the character of the 



326 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

Commonwealth, which has thus far measured to it the whole 
duration of its civil life. There has been no appreciable 
abandoning or dropping below the criterion established by 
the founders ; and now entering the second century it is per- 
mitted us to say that the original spirit of the Declaration and 
framework has constantly inspired the three practical func- 
tions of its legislation, interpretation, and execution. Very 
early after this government went into operation an occasion 
arose to test the fidelity of its administration to the Declara- 
tion of Eights. Under the supreme clause of the first article 
of the Bill of Rights slavery was abolished on the first oppor- 
tunity. There has been at different times much inquiry in 
relation to the share this first article bore in the decision of 
the case in Worcester County which, in 1783, put an end to 
slavery in this Commonwealth. On the one side it has been 
said that the words "all men are born free and equal" were 
one of the phrases of the period, having no more relation to 
slavery in Massachusetts than the same language bore to 
slavery in Virginia, whose Bill of Eights first introduced it 
there. And singularly it occurs that this hypothesis receives 
support from a letter upon the subject of slavery, written by 
John Adams himself to Dr. Belknap, March 21, 1795, re- 
cently published in the Belknap Papers by the Historical 
Society, in which the father of the Constitution says of 
slavery, "It is a subject to which I have never given any 
particular attention." There being no judicial reports of the 
time in which the Worcester case was decided, the question 
has been held to some extent open as to the direct and tactual 
bearing this first article may have had upon that decision. 
Chief Justice Parsons, himself a member of the Constitutional 
Convention, declared, in 1808, that "in the first action involv- 
ing the riglit of the master, which came before the Supreme 
Court after the establislmient of the Constitution, the judges 
declared that by virtue of the first article of the Declaration 
of Eights slavery in this State was no more." Chief Justice 
Shaw, in a subsequent case, seemed to doubt how far the 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 327 

adoption of the English opinion in Somerset's case, and the 
first article of our Declaration, may have respectively shared 
in the decision referred to. But I think great weight is due 
to the suggestion of the present learned Chief Justice Gray, 
contained in a paper recently presented to the Historical So- 
ciety, reminding us that Chief Justice Gushing and Associate 
Justices Sargeant, Sewall, Sullivan and Sumner, sitting in the 
case, and Lincoln and Strong of counsel, and Paine for the gov- 
ernment, were all members of the Convention of 1780, which 
adopted, and all but three members of the committee of thirty 
which reported, this article. It appears to me, therefore, that 
however difficult it may be to determine how far the inten- 
tion of the framers of the article related to this particular 
question, the weight of reason and authority is decisively in 
favor of the conclusion that the judges decreed the abolition 
of slavery in Massachusetts as one of the effects of the Bill of 
Eights. Judicial interpretation of tlie constitutional effect 
of an article must be final, though the field is never closed 
to archaeological curiosity as to the intention of its framers. 
And whilst the court may have justly given to tliis article 
an interpretation lying beyond the thought of its framers, so 
it is still competent for the curious searcher to maintain with 
Dr. Belknap that it was public opinion which abolished 
slavery in Massachusetts. 

The sense of constitutional responsibility of administration 
was soon brought under the most severe ordeal of our history 
in the Shays Eebellion, which occurred in 1786 and 1787. 
Both the beginning and the suppression of this memorable 
revolt may, in one sense, be ascribed to the lofty integrity of 
the early magistrates, and their resolve to hold the govern- 
ment and the people in full accord with the standard of the 
framers. The discontent which ended in arms grew up out 
of the exhaustion of finance and hope, public and private, 
and out of the vast debt, State and national, which were con- 
sequent upon the war ; and it combined all those elements of 
popular sympathy which spring from a depreciated currency, 



328 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

from widespread poverty and despair. It has seemed to me 
quite likely that a timid, hesitating policy on the part of the 
administration, a little lowering of the constitutional tone, a 
little yielding and weakness and false promise, might have 
put off perhaps indefinitely the shock. But the wise consti- 
tutionalists of that day saw that weakness in such a crisis 
would lead to fatal degeneracy. At a time when depression 
was at its worst, in 1785, Governor Bawdoin, who had pre- 
sided over the Constitutional Convention and borne a respon- 
sible share in its great work, on taking the chair of state 
uttered no uncertain sound, but insisted upon such measures 
of taxation as should maintain unimpaired the public credit. 
In his address upon the life of this magistrate Mr. Winthrop 
has not too strongly illustrated the service he rendered by 
impressing on the Legislature and the people the benefits 
of keeping faith with the Constitution by practising the high- 
est public morals in the darkest period. The same spirit 
spread to the other functionaries of administration. There is 
no passage in the annals of the State more dramatic and sub- 
lime than those which have recorded the firnmess of the 
judges in that time of threatened anarchy, in which a Justice, 
who had served with honor under a high commission in the 
war of the nation, now crowned that distinction by upholding 
the Constitution and laws in the presence of armed insur- 
gents. After the interval of nearly a century it beliooves us 
to recall with gratitude the conduct of these men in giving to 
the first operations of the government a character which has 
not been lost in the lapse of years. Their determination, 
their tone and temper, passed into the next era ; and, though 
they personally suffered from temporary disparagement and 
obloquy, the force of their example survived to the next gen- 
eration and even to our own time. The Commonwealth 
which under Bowdoin in 1786-87, in behalf of a public credit 
which should be perpetual, was reduced to the necessity of 
borrowing money of citizens of Boston to enable it to defend 
the Constitution against open insurrection, afterwards still 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 329 

proved its steadfastness to that early lesson, when, seventy- 
seven years later, in the midst of flagrant national war, it 
paid its principal and interest in gold, whilst depreciation 
reigned in many other quarters supreme. The example of 
good faith to the Constitution, taught by the fathers of the 
government, has survived the century. 

The Convention of 1780 provided that after the expiration 
of fifteen years, in 1795, it should be submitted to the peo- 
ple to say whether they desired to call another convention 
for revising the form of government, and that if two thirds 
of those voting on the question should respond in tlie affirm- 
ative, such convention should be chosen and convened. Act- 
ing in conformity to this provision, the people decided in 
1795 against the proposition, and through a period of forty 
years from its establishment the Constitution remained with- 
out any alteration and without any provision for its future 
revision. In 1820, by reason of the district of Maine hav- 
ing been set off as an independent State, a constitutional 
convention was duly ordered by the Legislature and the 
people, and assembled at the State House on the 15th of 
November. This was one of the most celebrated bodies of 
men which has ever assembled in this Commonwealth, alike 
for the standing of the delegates and the ability and decorum 
of the debates. The list of its members comprised such 
names as John Adams and Daniel Webster, Story and 
Parker, Shaw and Wilde, Lincoln and Hoar, Jackson and 
Prescott, Quincy and Blake, Savage and Hubbard, Sal ton- 
stall and Hale, and many others then or afterwards eminent 
in the State and nation. The journal of this convention is 
among the things lost, and the Commonwealth will ever be 
indebted to Mr. Nathan Hale for a complete record of its 
proceedings and discussions, made up at the time, comprised 
in a volume of nearly seven hundred pages of inestimable 
value. Mr. Adams was chosen president, but in conse- 
quence of the infirmities of age, he being then in his eiglity- 
sixth year, he declined the position, and Chief Justice Parker 



330 ADDEESSES OF ALEXANDEE H. BULLOCK. 

was elected to the office. This convention continued in 
session until the 9th of January. In perusing the report 
of these remarkable discussions one can scarcely fail to 
observe, that if supremacy or superiority should be assigned 
to any one among so many civil masters, the convention 
itself appears from time to time to have set that distinction 
upon Mr. Webster. He was then thirty-eight years old, and 
then for the first time he came foremost to the front in 
Massachusetts. It was during the sessions of this body that 
he pronounced his address at Plymouth which placed him 
before all others for a kind of eloquence which bears within 
itself the assurance of durability. One other convention 
assembled in 1853 to consider amendments of the Constitu- 
tion, of which the proceedings and discussions were reported 
in three immense volumes ; but as the result of its delibera- 
tions was altogether rejected by the people it does not come 
properly under the survey of this paper. Any careful reader 
of the debates of these two public bodies of 1820 and 1853 
will readily perceive that in the former it appears to have 
been difficult to induce the members to accept any change 
in the organic law, whilst in the latter it appears to have 
been difficult to prevent the acceptance of any alteration. 
The one deliberated at a time in which no party strife 
existed, whilst the other was itself in some degree the out- 
growth of party strife, and its deliberations reflected strongly 
the party politics of the day. 

In the last sixty years twenty-seven amendments have 
been incorporated into the Constitution, many of which may 
be grouped together in this paper for simplicity and brevity 
of statement. Several of these require only mention with- 
out comment. Such are the following, numbering them in 
the order of their adoption : First, a bill or resolve, if not 
signed by the Governor nor returned with his veto, is not 
to become a law if the Legislature adjourn within five days 
after the same has been laid before him ; second, the Legis- 
lature is empowered to constitute city governments in towns 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 331 

having twelve thousand inhabitants ; fourth, the appoint- 
ment of notaries public is transferred from the Legislature 
to the Governor ; fifth, minors enrolled in the militia are 
clothed with the right to vote in election of company 
officers : eiohth, certain officers of the State and of the 
United States are excluded from executive and legislative 
office in this Commonwealth ; twenty-seventh, instructors of 
Harvard College are made eligible to the Legislature ; the 
twenty-third, limiting the enfranchisement of certain natur- 
alized persons of foreign birth, is annulled by the twenty- 
sixth. These eight articles have failed to impress the 
public mind as much affecting any grave principles of the 
government. Articles sixth and seventh greatly reduce and 
simplify the oath of allegiance formerly taken by civil and 
military officers of the State, and rescind the declaration 
originally required of the executive and legislative officers 
of their belief in the Christian religion. The remaining 
articles of amendment bear a more important and apprecia- 
ble relation to the original frame of the Constitution. 

The third amendment, framed by the Convention of 1820, 
and the twentieth, adopted in 1857, made a radical change in 
the qualifications for voting at elections. The original Con- 
stitution required on the part of the voter a freehold estate 
within the Commonwealth of the annual income of three 
pounds, or any estate of the value of sixty pounds. This re- 
striction of the suffi-age to the possession of property was in 
some measure an inheritance of the people of this country, 
though greatly reduced from the extent pre^'ailing in England, 
and in their original constitutions I believe all the States ex- 
cept three had similar requirements of freehold or other prop- 
erty. This limitation continued in Massachusetts forty years, 
and in the social condition of that period it worked no especial 
hardship. There was here a yeomanry at that time, and a 
spirit of simplicity and contentment. But the change of in- 
dustries and activities incident to the advance of a more com- 
mercial age made the restriction difficult of application, and it 



332 ADDEESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

was stated in the Convention of 1820 that it had in practice 
become to some extent a farce and a mockery not conducive 
to public honesty. Accordingly, in conformity to the whole 
drift of our time, suffrage was thrown open to all male inliab- 
itants of twenty-one years, by whom or for whom a State 
or county tax has been paid within two years in the State, 
having resided in the State one year and in the town six 
months, paupers and persons under guardianship excepted. 
The other change in the qualification for voting was made 
by the twentieth amendment, in 1859, which excludes from 
the right of suffrage and of election to ofiice every person 
who is not able to read the Constitution of the State in the 
Ena,lish lanoua^e and to write his name. Thus it was the 
purpose of the one amendment to enlarge suffrage as to 
the possession of property qualification, and of the other 
amendment to bring it under a new restriction as to the 
possession of intelligence. This last article lias now been 
in existence more than twenty years, and whatever doubts 
may be entertained on account of its limited and artificial 
method of application, it seems to be regarded as the settled 
policy of the State. 

These restrictions of the right of suffrage are frequently 
criticised in party discussions in the Congress of the United 
States, but rarely with an intelligent understanding of their 
limited effects in practice, and still more rarely in a spirit of 
justice towards the motive and purpose which induced their 
adoption. But more strange still are the strictures sometimes 
published by theoretical writers here at home in relation to 
the great reduction which has been made in the property 
qualification. It has been spoken of by pessimist writers as 
equivalent to universal suffrage, and our system of popular 
elections under this rule has been pronounced a failure. And 
this is said in Massachusetts at a time in which no man of 
observation and candor can fail to perceive that from its 
legislation and from its judicature the spirit of intelligent 
reform and progress, of equity and justice, of liberty regulated 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 333 

by law and law tempered by liberty, is reflected in at least as 
clear and broad light as at any former period ; at a time in 
which, as we believe, all the characteristics of an advanced 
civilized state, so happily grouped in John Adams's mem- 
orable Fifth Chapter of 1780, are here more generally and 
securely enjoyed than in any other quarter. 

Tliere is a group of ten articles of amendment, adopted by 
the people at different times, of which some were afterwards 
annulled by the adoption of others, all of wliich may be 
briefly stated by their subjects, which are nearly related. 
These articles are the tenth, twelfth, thirteenth, fifteenth, six- 
teenth, seventeenth, twenty-first, twenty-second, twenty-fourth, 
and twenty-fifth, and it is only necessary to state the effect of 
them. 1. They have changed the political year from May to 
January, and have es.tablished one annual session of the Legis- 
lature instead of two, and have transferred the time of the 
State election to the month of November. 2. They have 
fixed the number of councillors as eight, and have constituted 
the same number of districts in which these ofhcers are sev- 
erally to be chosen by the people from their own number. 
3. The number of senators has been established as forty, and 
the Commonwealth is divided up into the same number of 
senatorial districts, determined by the number of legal voters, 
who shall respectively elect from their own number the forty 
senators, thus doing away witli the former apportionment to 
the counties as senatorial districts. By these alterations also 
have been swept away the original restriction of election as 
senator to persons having a freehold of three hundred pounds, 
or personal estate of six hundred pounds in value, and the 
restriction of eligibility to the House of Ee23resentatives to 
persons having a freehold of one hundred pounds, or ratable 
estate of two hundred pounds. And furthermore, under these 
amendments, the old provision of property basis for the Senate, 
that is to say, of apportioning to the senatorial districts their 
respective number of senators according to the proportion of 
public taxes paid by said districts respectively, disappeared 



334 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

in 1840. The original provision, placing the Senate basis on 
property, was debated in the Convention of 1820, with per- 
haps greater vigor and eloquence than any other question, the 
late Governor Lincoln being in the lead of the champions on 
the side of the popular right, and Mr. Webster defending the 
property side by most elaborate reasoning, aided by Judge 
Story in mingled argument and declamation, and by many 
others who shared in the discussion. The old-time reasoning, 
that the Senate was the citadel of property and the House of 
popular rights, was worked and almost overworked in the 
discussion, and prevailed with the delegates. Strangely 
enough, this debate, which was perhaps the ablest of all the 
debates in that convention of men so eminent, could not now 
easily be made palpable to the appreciation of a tenth part of 
the three hundred thousand voters in the Commonwealth, 
and was so far forgotten, only twenty years afterwards, that 
an amendment basing the apportionment of senators upon 
the simple number of citizens qualified to vote, was accepted 
by the people as one of the ripe fruits of modern experience. 
The only State whose constitution contained this, or any sim- 
ilar provision, was New Hampshire, in which, unless annulled 
within tlie last four years, it still remains unchanged ; but to 
what extent it is carried out in practice, a stranger may not 
be presumed to know. 4. These articles have, one after 
another, entirely altered the number and apportionment of 
representatives to the General Court; and the last article, 
adopted in 1857, has reduced the House of Representatives to 
two hundred and forty members, and has provided for the 
apportionment in representative districts, abolishing the 
system of town or corporation representation, which had 
existed two hundred and twenty years. No other question in 
our annals has been so frequently and fully discussed as this, 
and the debates upon it, if compiled, would fill many pon- 
derous volumes. Representation by towns was one of the 
earliest things established in the first days of the colony, and 
as far back as 1641 this right was registered as the sixty- 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 335 

second fundamental in the constitutional code of the Body of 
Liberties. The history of the subject illustrates the cunuda- 
tive force of custom, and the difficulty of overcoming tradi- 
tional practice, even after it has become incongruous and 
impracticable. If, in the days of Winthrop's administration, 
any other than the town system of representation had been 
fixed upon, it may be presumed there might have been a less 
strenuous adherence to it; but the long enjoyment of the 
right by the several small and homogeneous communities in 
the townships endeared it to them as a thing almost sacred. 
The customs, the consuetudincs, of the Anglo-Saxon race have 
for six centuries been among the things least susceptible of 
change. Tlie method of election by districts, which has now 
been in use for twenty-four years, may be deemed one of 
those steps of reform which are rarely reversed, and it is in 
accord with the principle adopted by all of the vStates of this 
Union, except the five other States of New England, which 
still adhere substantially to the traditions of the period of the 
early settlements. 6. By the same group of amendments the 
Secretary, Treasurer, Auditor, and Attorney-General, usually 
termed executive officers on the ticket with the Governor and 
Lieutenant-Governor, are made annually elective by the whole 
people from their own number. 

By the fourteenth amendment, 1855, in the election of all 
civil officers of the State, provided for by the Constitution, 
the rule of plurality of votes lias taken the place of that of 
a majority. The general degree, not merely of acquiescence, 
but of satisfaction, which has been manifested for twenty- 
five years under the operation of this provision, adds 
another to the hundreds of illustrations of the general 
truth, that whenever in administering government two sys- 
tems are in question, both artificial or arbitrary as to any 
fundamental principle, prejudice of attachment to an ancient 
practice must give way to the convenience of modern com- 
munities. 

The eighteenth amendment, 1855, has made it a part of the 



336 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

organic law of the State, that all moneys raised by taxation 
in the towns and cities, or appropriated by the Legislature, 
for tlie support of public schools, shall be applied only to 
schools which are under the superintendence of the consti- 
tuted municipal authorities, and shall never be appropriated 
to schools maintained by any religious sect. I have not 
observed that this provision has as yet been adopted by any 
other State. Its acceptance by the people of Massachusetts, 
twenty-five years ago, has given a conclusion in advance to 
questions of which the agitation has since threatened to 
spring up out of tendencies which have rapidly made head- 
way toward the establishment of parochial and denomina- 
tional scliools. The authorship of this article belongs to 
the late Chief Justice Joel Parker, who was its mover and 
foremost advocate, aided by the late Vice-President Wilson, 
in the Convention of 1853 ; and although it was rejected by 
the people, in that year, as an integral part of the general 
body of amendments which were framed amid the excite- 
ment of party politics, it was promptly taken up by the 
next Legislature and easily passed through all the constitu- 
tional stages. 

The nineteenth article of amendment, 1855, has trans- 
ferred from the chief executive of the Commonwealth to the 
people of the counties and districts, the selection of sher- 
iffs, probate registers, clerks of the courts, and district at- 
torneys, annulling a principle which had been in existence 
since the foundation of the Government. The same thing 
was attempted in the Convention of 1820, and was sum- 
marily voted down. The sound and solid reasons against 
this proposition are too obvious, and have been too fre- 
quently elucidated in discussion, to warrant their present 
repetition. The history of its adoption is the history of the 
mingling of a constitutional question of enduring impor- 
tance with an ephemeral question of party expediency. It 
had been carried througli the Constitutional Convention of 
1853 by one political party, and after its rejection by the 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 337 

people it was taken up by another party on its return to 
power, and adopted as one of the conditions of appeasing its 
opponents and of its own continuance in power. It was an 
unseamanlike instance of throwing a tub to the whale, after 
the whale had disappeared in far water. It was a propitia- 
tory offering by a noble party in the weakness of its last 
days, sacrificing an elemental principle of the Constitution, 
but bringing not even the expected advantage to its authors ; 
for in the same year the party itself took its departure from 
American politics. I have heard judges say — judges, the 
mention of whose names awakens resj)ect and confidence 
over the Commonwealth — that the practice under this new 
system has indicated a degeneracy from the better condition 
under the old system. Attempts have since been made to 
restore the ancient constitutional method, and may it not be 
hoped the people of Massachusetts will yet return to it ? 

The eleventh amendment is that of the third article of the 
Bill of Eights, the only instance in which those Eights have 
been touched by the hand of change in the entire century. 
The original third article is the only one in the Declaration 
of whicli John Adams was not the author, but he had the 
credit of it, at least to some extent, in other parts of the 
United States. In the recently published Warren letters, 
already mentioned, written in 1807, he himself gives a 
curious account of an interview with him, sought by the 
pastor of a German church in a town of Pennsylvania, 
while on his last journey to Washington, pending his second 
candidacy for the presidency ; during which the minister 
made known that there was a general belief in that section 
that Mr. Adams had influence enough in making the Massa- 
chusetts Constitution to establish here the Presbyterian 
(Congregational) religion and make all other sects of Chris- 
tians pay taxes for the support of it; and Mr. Adams 
states that this report " had an immense effect " among many 
religious sects, "and turned them in such numbers as de- 
cided the [fourth presidential] election." This memorable 

22 



338 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

third article was so unlike anything contained in the con- 
stitutions of most of the other States, and so strongly in 
contrast with the aim and scope of religious thought after 
the Eevolution, that it awakened general attention and criti- 
cism outside of New England. The precise posture, both 
towards the past and future, of public opinion on this ques- 
tion within this Commouwealth, was justly stated in a letter 
of Dr. Franklin, written to Richard Price in October, 1780, 
immediately after the ratification of this instrument : — 

" Though the people of IMassachusetts have not in their new 
Constitution kept quite clear of rehgious tests, yet, if we consider 
what that people were a hundred years ago, we must allow they 
have gone great lengths in liberality of sentiment on religious sub- 
jects ; and we may look for greater degrees of perfection, when 
their Constitution, some years hence, shall be revised." 

A similar forecast of subsequent experience was made on 
the other side of the ocean by Dr. Paley. My attention to 
the following passage from his " Political Philosophy," pub- 
lished in 1785, has been drawn by tlie very instructive dis- 
course upon the Centenary of the Constitution, delivered in 
January, 1880, by the Eev. Dr. Edward E. Hale : — 

" The only plan which seems to render the legal maintenance of 
a clergy practicable, without the legal preference of one sect of 
Christians to others, is that of an experiment which is said to be 
attempted or designed in some of the new states of North America. 
In this scheme it is not left to the option of the subject whether 
he will contribute, or how much he shall contribute, to the main- 
tenance of a Christian ministry ; it is only referred to his choice to 
determine by what sect his contribution shall be received. . . . 
The above arrangement is undoubtedly the best that has been 
proposed upon this principle : it bears the appearance of liberality 
and justice ; it may contain some solid advantages ; nevertheless, 
it labors under inconveniences which will be foimd, I think, upon 
trial, to overbalance all its recommendations." 

This article made it the right and the duty of the Legisla- 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 339 

tiire to require of the people support of public worship and 
of religious teachers by compulsory taxation, and to enjoin 
attendance on Divine worship. The address of the Conven- 
tion of 1780, recommending to the people the result of its 
labors, which has been said to have been written by Samuel 
Adams, states that this article was passed with more than 
common unanimity ; but a large vote was returned against 
it, and, pending the question of the ratification, it encoun- 
tered the general opposition of the citizens of Boston, 
who assembled in Faneuil Hall and adopted hostile resolu- 
tions with almost unanimous consent. The proposition was 
the natural product of the blending of the civil and ecclesi- 
astical functions of the State under the Puritan regime in 
the formative period. As early as 1638, a law subjecting 
to " assessment and distress " all who should not voluntarily 
support the ordinances in the churches ; a similar act in 
1654, when the colony had become large; in 1693, when 
under the new charter there were upwards of eighty 
churches, an act requiring every town to support a Congre- 
gational minister, and assessing therefor all inhabitants of 
whatever society relations ; — these may be singled out among 
the many instances of the stern policy which continued, at 
times somewhat relaxing, into the latter half of the last 
century. The reactionary sentiment relating to tliis subject, 
which sprung up about the time of the Eevolution, was not 
sufficient to prevent the adoption of the third article ; but 
large and increasing numbers became at once restive under 
its operation. The opposition to it afterwards grew more 
intensive by reason of great changes in the number and 
mutual relations of Christian sects and parishes, to which 
judicial decisions added further elements of public dissat- 
isfaction. The Convention of 1820 contended with these 
difficulties through long and grave deliberations, and after 
exhaustive discussion proposed a modification, which proved 
unsatisfactory to the people and failed of ratification. The 
agitation of the question was resumed and continued until 



340 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

the year 1833, when the pi-esent amendment was adopted. 
Of the many legislative reports upon the subject, the last 
was made in the Senate by Mr. Samuel Hoar, in 1833, who 
stated that, " as the alteration would liberate the citizens 
from liability to compulsory taxation for the support of 
public worship, in the existing state of the ecclesiastical 
societies in the Conmionwealth," it was expedient it should 
pass. The experience of almost fifty years under the change 
has been accompanied by general content with its jDrovisions ; 
and all that now remains of the famous third article, upon 
which volumes have been written and spoken, is comprised 
in the three simple jDropositions, (1) religious equality to all 
denominations, (2) the right of every religious society to 
raise money for its expenses, and (3) the right of every per- 
son to be exempt from sharing in the expense unless he 
voluntarily enrolls himself as a member. The prediction of 
Dr. Franklin has been fulfilled, and the principle of absolute 
religious liberty, sometimes called the freedom of the mind, 
sometimes called " soul liberty," traced by some to the phi- 
losophy of Descartes, adopted as a political policy by Eoger 
Williams in Rhode Island before Descartes had published 
any philosophy, has now been a part of the Constitution of 
Massachusetts nearly half a century. 

The only amendment which remains to be mentioned is 
the ninth, which I deem most valuable of all. After 1795, 
and prior to 1820, there was no provision in the Constitu- 
tion for its revisal. The convention of that year, on the 
report of Mr. Webster, adopted this article, which provides 
that any amendment approved by a majority of the Senators 
and two thirds of the Representatives voting upon it in 
two successive years, and then being ratified by a majority 
of the people voting on it, shall become a part of the Con- 
stitution. And this article was ratified by the people, 
although it appears that they were so adverse to opening 
any door for alterations of the organic structure of their 
government, that nearly one third of all the votes cast were 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 341 

given against even this well-guarded provision. It was the 
object of the convention, in providing this method for possi- 
ble changes in the Constitution, to forestall any necessity for 
calling conventions, and to discourage a practice, since not 
uncommon in some of the States, of educating the people in 
the exercise of constitution-making. The admirable success 
of this provision is shown by the fact that, of the whole 
number of amendments made in the lust sixty years, all but 
the nine which were initiated by the Convention of 1820, 
that is to say, eighteen of the twenty-seven, have come to 
us in the manner thus provided. The greater safety of this 
method over that of conventions made easy and frequent, is 
obvious to reason, and it received the signal approval of the 
people themselves in 1853, when they rejected the whole 
catalogue of amendments offered to them by the convention 
of that year, including six which only two years later they 
ratified when coming to them through the stages pointed 
out by the Convention of 1820. It may now be regarded 
the settled conviction of the people of Massachusetts tliat 
they prefer to obtain amendments of their government in 
the more slow, more calm, more conservative manner herein 
indicated. The Convention of 1853 offered to the citizens 
of the State a policy of such frequent conventions for con- 
stitutional revisal that now, after subsidence of the excite- 
ment of that day, it may fairly be pronounced unprecedented 
and grotesque. The folly of its proposed treatment of a 
supposed chronic distemper in the body politic, only from 
the dispensary of frequent and periodical constitutional con- 
ventions, was graphically exposed by Dr. J. G. Palfrey, in his 
clear and analytical address to the people. '• Florence," said 
Dr. Palfrey, " before her frolics of this kind were brought to 
an end by the Grand Ducal despotism, had at one time, if I 
remember aright, five constitutions in ten years. It was not 
the way to a quiet life." 

An analysis of the several amendments accepted in the 
last sixty years discloses that we live under the same sub- 



342 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

stantive form of government which was established one 
hundred years ago. But five of all the amendments have 
introduced any new subject matter in the Constitution ; all 
the rest of them have been modifications, — some of them re- 
jjealing others ; many of them susceptible of being grouped 
under a single head as affecting the machinery of tlie elec- 
tion of the executive and legislative officers ; a portion of 
them merely formal; and only a small part of the whole 
number touching any elementary principle of the govern- 
ment. Since the establishment of this Constitution, the 
population of the Commonwealth has more than cpiintupled, 
and there has been more than a corresponding advance in 
its aggregated wealth, and in the diffusion of competence 
and comfort among its subjects. With rare exceptions, the 
generations have carried out in good faith the intent of the 
framers. Under the high and inspiring tone which they 
transfused into the Constitution there has been, there is now, 
constant advancement on every field of " literature and the 
sciences, of humanity and general benevolence, of public 
and private charity," of legislation, of judicial interpreta- 
tion, and impartial administration of the laws. The later 
change of the homogeneousness of our population by the 
admixture of races imposes upon men of education and 
authority a constantly increasing duty to impress upon the 
people the value of this Constitution, and the importance of 
protecting it from every unnecessary alteration. And upon 
no body of men does this duty rest with higher responsi- 
bility than upon the Historical Societies of Massachusetts, 
in the archives of which the names and the fame of its 
authors are treasured and guarded. 

There is no technical science of government, and there 
can be none. The history of free nations has illustrated 
the truth that governments are growths, springing from 
necessities and conveniences suggested by experience ; and 
they approximate to the highest dictates of reason, according 
to the L'rowth of communities in intelligence and virtue. 



CENTENNIAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTION. 343 

The principles essential for the groundwork of government 
for a free and virtuous commonwealth are few and elemen- 
tary, and the world has never beheld them so well applied 
or so happily illustrated as in the governments of the States 
of this Union. Of all these States, I may be pardoned for 
selecting Massachusetts as a type for the sound principles 
embodied in the foundations, and for a steadfast adherence 
to them through a hundred years. And yet, how simple 
the essential parts of all this framework are, has been well 
•stated by John Adams, the framer-in-chief : — 

" Representations, instead of collections, of the people ; a total 
separation of the executive from the legislative power, aud of the 
judicial from both ; aud a balauce in the legislature, by three inde- 
pendent, equal branches, — are perhaps the three only discoveries 
in the constitution of a free governmeut, since the institution of 
Lycurgus. Even these have been so unfortunate that they have 
never spread : the first has been given up by all the nations, ex- 
cepting one, who had once adopted it ; and the other two, reduced 
to practice, if not invented, by the English nation, have never 
been imitated by any other except their own descendants in 
America." 



JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

memorial observances in the city of worcester, sept. 26, 188l 

Mr. Mayor and Fellow-Citizens : 

I HAVE no words, I have no capacity for words, fitted to 
this occasion of distress and sympathy. The pall which 
hung suspended in mid-heaven well-nigh three months, has 
at length dropped and thrown its shadow over all. Never 
before, for a similar period of time, have the sensibilities of 
fifty millions of people, having in accord with them the hearts 
of all civilized countries, been so stirred each morning and 
evening by alternations of hope and despair, — by one com- 
mon, universal emotion of sympathy for a national victim 
suffering with a heroism patient and sublime ; by daily bul- 
letins of scenes of domestic devotion and tenderness of rarest 
sweetness ; by an all-pervading anxiety, which found then its 
only relief in a nation's prayers, which reaches now its natu- 
ral termination when the sense of anxiety is supplanted by 
the sense of desolation. Such has been our intensified con- 
sciousness and experience for a period of three months. The 
drama is over. The strain which this prolonged and anxious 
suspense has laid upon our emotional nature has given way 
to the last tidings and to the last grief 

The President has passed from the scene of daily bulletins, 
and henceforth he is at rest. The memory of his life and 
character will be embalmed in our hearts by the memory of 
his sufferings and death. Never before, in the annals of the 
race, on so large a field of observation, have a whole people 



JAMES A. GARFIELD. 345 

been brought so closely and tenderly around the death-bed of 
their ruler. From the East and West, from the North and 
South, from the ever-memorable 2d of July to the memo- 
rable 19th of September, every American was brought by 
the electric cords into an intimate acquaintance with the 
President, — an acquaintance which has been enriched, en- 
deared, and sanctified by the pathos of each succeeding day. 
He was struck down at the moment of starting on his first 
official excursion, designed that he might become better ac- 
quainted with the people of his care in New England ; but 
they know him far better now than would have been possible 
from his passing through their villages, even with all his 
magnetic power in life. And what a scene for acquaintance 
that has been, which we have all, as it were, witnessed ! His 
submission to the first shock, without repining ; liis serene 
acceptance of the slight hope which was held out to him for 
living ; his calmness and fortitude through these eighty days, 
alternating with light and darkness ; his thoughtfulness and 
inquiry for the public service amid the weariness and depres- 
sion of his sinking condition ; his affectionate intercourse 
from the couch of languishing with his family, his kindred, 
and his friends ; his resolute determination to live for his 
country, if it might be possible, but readiness to depart, if 
such were the Divine will ; his almost triuni pliant gazing 
upon the sea, "the emblem of eternity, the throne of the 
invisible," with which his spirit fell into sweet and solemn 
harmony ; his last evening upon earth, when in the presence 
of those most dear to him, and of the kindly refrain of the 
ocean, and of the constellations shining over him, his soul 
ascended above the constellations, attuned to the apostrophe 
of the pious Doddridge : — 

" Ye stars are but the shining dust of my divine abode, 
The pavement of the heavenly court where I shall reign with God. " 

Ah, my friends, these scenes have made up a treasury for 
the memory, for the instruction, for the frequently recurring 



346 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

sympathies and affections of the American people for many 
years to come. And so long as they shall continue to lament 
the blow which cut him down at the very opening of a bril- 
liant national career, their affections and susceptibilities will 
group themselv^es around these scenes of mourning all the 
more tenderly because of the personal virtues which diffuse 
such fragrance over his untimely end. 

But in this hour of our grief and depression let us take 
heart that, while the Lord removes the workman, he will 
carry on the work. As the late President himself observed, 
when, sixteen years ago, his martyr predecessor was in the 
same manner taken from us, it becomes us to remember that 
God reigns and the nation lives. Kings and Presidents die, 
but the State is immortal. Some of you have gazed at the 
window in the vast palace at Versailles, where, in former 
days, when the French monarchy lived, the state herald 
stepped out at the moment of the death of a king, proclaim- 
ing, " The King is dead ; hail to the King." It was giv- 
ing form and expression to the impressive truth that, while 
rulers are mortal, the nation is perpetual, under the protection 
of the Most High. I was impressed by a remark which was 
made by the late Lord Beaconsfield in the House of Commons, 
upon the occasion of the death of President Lincoln. He 
said that he liad noticed that assassination had seldom 
affected the current of history. The remark is largely true, 
and is frauuht with historical encouraoement. The Lord in 
his wisdom permits the assassin to play his foul part ; but it 
stops with one life, and he is not permitted to obstruct the 
august purposes of Providence in the affairs of the world. 
Gerard inflicted what seemed a mortal blow upon the hopes 
of the Low Counties in the assassination of William the 
Silent ; but there was still left a Euler above, and the people 
of those stricken states continued on in their struggle till 
they conquered independence of the Spanish King and deliv- 
erance from the Spanish inquisition. Eavaillac gave a terrible 
shock to the spuit of the French people by the murder of 



JAMES A. GARFIELD. 347 

Henry the Fourth ; but the irresistible wheels of Providence 
continued to revolve propitiously over progressive and beauti- 
ful France. And, at a most critical stage of our own history, 
Booth startled the human race from its confidence by the 
death of Lincoln ; but the American people took affairs into 
their own hands, and reconstructed and reconsolidated what, 
by common consent, is now the foremost nation of the world. 
This same instruction is repeated by the present calamity. 
It is among the inscrutable and mysterious dealings of Divine 
Providence that our chief magistrate, so noble by the temper 
of his mind and heart, so invested with promise to this 
country by his broad experience and attainments, so certain 
to become an exemplar for any future age by his purity of 
character, should have been allowed to fall by the liand of 
the assassin. But the mystery goes no farther ; and it has 
been assured to us, by the manifestations of God in Ristory, 
that the consequences of the crime caunot reach the life of 
the Government. No, — let us not be afraid of any disturb- 
ance of the American Government, which is allied to the 
throne of Heaven and to the hearts of fifty millions who 
trust in the God of their fathers. 

And, in this moment of our bereavement, it is important 
that we take one thought more into our reflections. It is 
important that we should guard the fountains of the moral 
sense of the nation, which is the only source of the public 
security. "When the disorganizer is a conspicuous factor of 
the social problem, let the Christian conservator take heed 
of his own responsibility. Every virtuous magistrate, every 
minister of our holy religion, every public or private teacher, 
every man and woman of sobriety of thought, — let him, let 
her, in every word of the mouth, in every lesson to the young, 
be set firm against the socialistic doctrine, — that doctrine of 
shame and horror, — tliat the assassin may be a legitimate 
instrument of reform. To the assassin, if to any one in the 
whole uni\'erse of God, should be appropriated the Latin 
phrase of the law of nations, — hostis humani generis, — the 



348 ADDRESSES OF ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK. 

enemy of the human race. Americans who instil the opinion 
that some particular national ruler may pass rightfully under 
the stroke of the assassin, give that support to this enemy 
of mankind which may commend, nay, which has already 
commended, our poisoned chalice to our own lips. The sov- 
ereign of the great empire in the East — the only crowned 
head in all Europe who was our true and steadfast friend 
through every crisis of our late civil war — had scarcely been 
struck down by a band of assassins, and voices of approval 
uttered in the free speech of this country had scarcely died 
away from the lips of many persons, native and foreign-born 
alike, when the dangerous lesson fell with horrible application 
at our own door. There can be no tribunal in all the earth 
which may establish a boundary between justifiable and 
unjustifiable assassination ; and wdienever or wherever, in 
Europe or in the United States, the assassin is about to pro- 
ceed to his work, he himself alone becomes the judge of his 
justification. If in our time there be any doctrine which 
above every other is abhorrent to Christian sentiment, and is 
loaded with peril to social order, it is this. Let the American 
people, in the interests of religion and humanity, for their 
own salvation and security, visit upon every such or kindred 
instruction their indignation and condemnation. It is fit and 
proper that we inscribe this lesson upon our hearts as we 
bend in reverence and humiliation before the inscrutable dis- 
pensation wdiich has visited upon our country one of the 
signal horrors of the age. We cannot supplicate the protec- 
tion and blessing of Him who holds in his control the des- 
tinies of this nation, unless we nerve ourselves to the duties 
which He has imposed upon us as free agents of an organized 
Christian government. 



INDEX. 



INDEX. 



A DAMS, Charles Francis, mentioned, 307, 

323. 
Adams, .John, at the Continental Congress, 
5G. 

mentioned, 49, 61. 

second President of the United States, 
166. 

concerning slavery, 169. 

learning of, 235. 

his education, research, &c., 238. 

concerning framing of tlie Constitu- 
tion of Massachusetts, 309, 310. 

concerning religion in the Bill of 
Rights, 316. 

framing the Constitution, 317. 

letter of, to John Penn, 318. 

concerning "good humor" among the 
people, 323. 

his interest in natural history, 323. 

letter to Dr. Belknap, quoted, 326. 

chosen president of Convention of 1 780, 
329. 

member of Convention of 1780, 329. 

interview with pastor of German 
church in Pennsylvania, 337. 

quoted, 343. 
Adams, John Quincy, prediction concern- 
ing slavery, 170. 
Adams, Samuel, concerning the Revolu- 
tion, 139. 

the will of, 235. 

mentioned, 238. 

member of Convention of 1789, 309,310. 
Address before the Literary Societies of 
Williams College, 45. 

before Free Institute of Industrial Sci- 
ence at Worcester, 187. 

on the character of Dr. Samuel G. 
Howe, 248. 

at unveiling of statue of Alexander 
Hamilton, 287. 

on the Centennial of the Massachusetts 
Constitution, 298. 



Address on death of James A. Garfield, 344. 
Agassiz, Louis, naturalist of Cambridge, 

mentioned, 1S9. 
Aiken, John, English writer, mentioned, 

273. 
Amazon River, American influence extends 

to, 52. 
Amendments to the Constitution of Massa- 
chusetts, 330-340. 
concerning election in Massachusetts, 
333. 
America, if the Union were broken, 49. 
the birtii of, and rising of Bacon con- 
temporaneous occurrences, 51. 
has opened commerce with Japan, 52. 
has interpreted the dream of Colum- 
bus, 52. 
extent of her shipping, 52. 
what she has done for genius and art, 

52. 
her early discoveries, settlements, &c., 

53. 
the colonial period of, 53. 
the revolutionary period of, 53. 
American government, the, of Grecian 
model, 61. 
established, 198. 
American merchant abroad, the, 198. 
American nationality in its unit}' and in its 
diversity considered, 50. 
what its development has done for the 

world, 52. 
from what it has grown, 54. 
considered in its diversity, 54, 55. 
an invocation for its preservation, 65. 
the future of, 174. 

the first conception of, in America, 234. 
Americans, respect of, for scliolars, think- 
ers, soldiers, 61. 
Ames, Fisher, American statesman, 61. 
policy of, 125. 

concerning the framing of the Consti- 
tution, 141. 
mentioned, 292. 



352 



INDEX. 



Amherst College, address before Alumni 
of, 30. 
contrasts of its history, 31, 32. 
its students, 32. 
its graduates, 33. 
its title of benefactor, 34. 
the future influence of its graduates, 

35. 
address before Alumni of, 156. 
concerning the grant of Legislature to, 

157. 
in her prime, 160. 
Amherst, Gen. Jeffrey, an English general, 

mentioned, 204. 
Andersonville, Union prisoners at, 126. 
Andes Mountain, American influence ex- 
tends to, 52. 
Andrew, Gov. John A., war governor of 

Massachusetts, 207. 
Antietam, mentioned, 40, 43. 

death of Lieutenant Holbrook at, 
41. 
"A peace of war," 172. 
Arkwright, Sir Richard, English factory 

owner, 19, 137. 
Armstrong, Timothy, soldier of the Revo- 
lution, 124. 
Arnold, Dr. Thomas, of Rugby, quoted, 

138. 
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Presi- 
dent of United States, 76. 
how it affects historv', 346. 
of James A. Garfleld, President of 
United States, 344. 
Athens, cause of her greatness and decay, 

60, 61. 
Athol, incorporation of town of, 111. 
formerly called Pequoig, 112. 
maintained a garrison against the In- 
dians, 112. 
mentioned, 114. 
Atlantic Ocean, electric current established 
from, to the Pacific, 52. 

Bacon, Lord Francis, 35, 226. 

the benefit of his works to us, 51. 

his rising contemporaneous with the 

birth of American nationality, 51. 
the change worked by, in the mechan- 
ical pursuits, 143-146. 
Ball, Thomas, sculptor, 148. 
Baltimoi-e. Republican Convention at, 67. 
citizen of, message to people of Massa- 
chusetts, 68. 



Baltimore, platform of, compared with that 
of Chicago, 69. 

Bancroft, George, historian of United 
States, 103, 229. 

Barbauld, Latitia, governess of Lord Den- 
man, 273. 

Barre, Louis, a French litterateur, 239. 

Barton, Bezaleel, Revolutionary soldier, 
124. 

Barton, Samuel, Revolutionarj' soldier, 412. 

Batcheiler, Dr., of Royalston, Mass., 127. 

Bayard, James A., an American statesman, 
292. • 

Beaconsfield, Lord, quoted on death of 
Abraham Lincoln, 346. 

Beckwith, Lieutenant, killed at Chantilly, 
42. 

Belknap, Dr. Jeremy, concerning slavery 
in Massachusetts, 326, 327. 

Bellarmine, Roberto, an Italian cardinal, 
316. 

Bemis, Lieutenant, killed at Chantilly, 42. 

Bennington, town of, mentioned, 123. 

Berkeley, Bishop Richard, the lyric proph- 
ecy of, 52. 
the song of, 199. 
coming to Rhode Island, 231. 

Bigelow, Col . Timothy, monument to, 205, 
note. 

Bill of Rights, the, for Massachusetts, 311, 
313. 
the twelfth article of, 315. 
concerninfj the subject of religion, 316. 

Binney, Amos, American naturalist, report 
"of, 324. 

Blake, George, member of Convention of 
1820, 329. 

Bland, William, English writer, mentioned, 
237. 

Blind, number of, in Great Britain, 251. 
Dr. Howe's services concerning educa- 
tion of, 252. 

Bolingbroke, Viscount, as a statesman, 94. 

Bonds, Confederate, the value of, 3. 

Bonds, government, an appeal concerning, 
3, 4. 

Booth, Wilkes, retribution of, 106. 
assassination of Lincoln, 347. 

Boston and Lowell, the !>uilding of, 134. 

Bowdoin, Gov. James, mentioned, 309. 
intrusted with framing of the Consti- 
tution of Massachusetts, 310. 
eulogy on, quoted, 310. 
service of, during Shay's rebellion, 328. 

Bowles, Samuel, mentioned, 161. 



INDEX. 



353 



Boynton, Mr., first donor to See. of In- 
dustrial Science at Worcester, 187. 
Brattle Street Meeting-house, tlie, 3'24. 
British Empire, her drum-beat heard around 

the globe, bi. 
Brougham, Lord Henry, mentioned, 138. 
Brown, John, of Ossawatomie, mentioned, 

59. 
Buchanan, James, in office as President, 87. 

concerning State sovereignty, 167. 
Bullock, Alexander H., a delegate to Con- 
vention at Baltimore, G7. 
eulogy on Abraham Lincoln, delivered 

at Worcester by, 7G. 
address at the hundredth anniversary 

of town ot Royalston, 108. 
in Paris with Charles Sumner, 241. 
at dinner, given to General Uix at 

Paris, 195. 
at grave of Aaron Burr, 214. 
in New York when a boy, 287. 
of Royalston, 127. 
Bull Run 2d, mentioned, 40. 
"Bunch of Grapes Tavern" at Roj^alston, 

115. 
Bunker Hill, the drums beat there, 120. 

mentioned, 123. 
Bunyan, John, 51. 
Burbank, Eleazer, revolutionary soldier, 

124. 
Burke, Edmund, at Beaconsfield, 181. 
mentioned, 12, 35, 49, 2-39. 
agent of New York in England, 238. 
quoted, 28, 72, 138, 257. 
Burlingame, Anson, mentioned, 199. 
Burnside, Gen, Ambrose Everett, 43. 
Burr, Aaron, the grave of, 244. 
Butler, Gen. Benjamin F., incident related 

by, 149. 
Byron, Lord, concerning Greek revolu- 
tion, 250. 

Cable, the laying of, between Europe 

and United .States, 197. 
Cabot, George, an American senator, men- 
tioned, 292, 309. 
Cairo, city of, 8. 

Calhoun, John C, his influence in the 
South, 63. 
HIS war, 63. 

the scholar of the South, 63. 
tribute to, 64. 

concerning the school of secession, 167, 
-^ 168. 



Calhoun, John C, concerning slavery, 169. 
the master of his school, 245. 

Calhoun, Mr., trustee of Amherst College, 
160. 

California, Arizona, and Nevada, 199. 

Camden, battle of, mentioned, 40. 

Camden, Earl of, English judge, 239. 

Cameron, Simon, mentioned, 102. 

Campbell, Gen. William B., mentioned, 104. 

Canning, George, English statesman, 49. 
concerning abolition of slavery, 104. 

Cape Cod, the cable landed at, 197. 

Carlyle, Thomas, criticises condition of our 
country, 141. 
quoted, 236. 

Carolina, state of, mentioned, 126. 

Carroll, Charles, mentioned, 292. 

Celtic, Teutonic, and Yankee blood, 8. 

Centennial situation ol woman, the, address 
delivered at Mt. Holyoke Seminary, 
258. 

Centennial of the Massachusetts Constitu- 
tion, address on, 298. 

Chandler, Mr., one of the first proprietors 
of Royalston, Mass., 122. 

Channing, William Eller3', memory of, im- 
perishable, 231. 

Chantilly, death of Union soldiers at, 42. 
mentioned, 40. 43. 

Charlestown, army gathered in, 124. 

Chase, Roger, soldier of the Revolution, 
124. 

Chase, Salmon P., instance of Lincoln's 
magnanimity to, 103. 

Chatham, Lord, 49, 237, 239. 
as a statesman, 94. 

concerning the inhabitants of New 
England, 204. 

Chesapeake Bay, the, 3. 

Chesney's "Essays in Military Biogra- 
phy " quoted, 207. 

Chicago platform, compared with that of 
Baltimore, 69. 

Chief Justice of New England, 227. 

Choate, Rufus, eloquence of, 82. 

quoted concerning Hamilton, 291. 
quoted, 314. 

Choisenl, Madame de, letters of, 268. 

Cicero, quoted, 34, 58. 
influence of, 61. 

Civil life, cultivated minds take the lead 
in, 235. 

Civil war, in the midst of, 6. 

Clark, , member of Massachusetts 

Twenty -first Regiment, 43. 



23 



354 



INDEX. 



Clarke, John, one of the founders of Rhode 

Island, 255. 
Clay, Henry, concerning nomination of 
Lincoln, 86. 
in President Lincoln's place, 88. 
concerning slavery, 1G9, 170. 
Clevenger, Shobal L. Vail, American sculp- 
tor, 148. 
Cobden, Richard, quotation concerning, 98. 
Coke, Lord, mentioned, 226. 

quoted, .314. 
Cold Harbor, battle at, 126. 
Colonial period of America, 53. 
Columbus, Christopher, America has in- 
terpreted the dream of, 52. 
Commencement Day at Amherst College, 

30. 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, duty of 

the people towards, 9. 
Comparative Zoology, Museum of, 324. 
Compromise, what it means, in the national 
struggle, 57, 58. 

Condd, , incident concerning Marshal 

Turenne, 209. 
Confederacy, tlie people of the, 3. 
Confederate bonds, the value of, 3. 
Confederate States, the republic of, 6. 
Confederation, the, 6. 

articles of, concerning the, 165. 
Connecticut, State of, 2. 

concerning a constitution for, 308. 
Constitution, a written, concerning our na- 
tion, 165. 
a written, in Virginia, 303. 
the, the framing of, 140, 166. 
the interpretation of, 244. 
Hamilton's part in framing, 293. 
adoption of the, ni Masssacliusetts, 

304-306. 
of Massachusetts, amendments to, 330- 

340. 
concerning the revisal of, 340. 
Constitutional Convention, the, 56. 
Continental Congress, the, 56. 
Convention of 1787, the, 243. 

of 1780, provisions of, 329. 
Cooper, Dr. Samuel, learning of, 234. 

inaugural sermon preached by, 325. 
Corning, Erastus, letter of Lincoln to, 

101. 
Cotton, John, 226. 

Crompton, Samuel, English artisan, 19. 
Cromwell, Oliver, 89, 229. 
Crown Point, service of Capt. John Fry at, 
120. 



Czar of Russia, what America has done for, 
52. 
his friendship to our country, 99. 
assassination of, 348. 
Cushing, Thomas, American patriot, men- 
tioned, 309. 
Cushing, Chief Justice William, 327. 
Cutting, Silas, Revolutionary soldier, 124. 

Davis, Esquire, Revolutionary soldier, 
124. 

Davis, Jefferson, his attempts at compro- 
mise, 57. 

Deane, Charles, of Historical Society, 
315. 

Death, in defence of one's country, 5. 

Declaration of Independence, concerning 
the, 165. 
the adoption of, in the different States, 
301-306. 

Decree of Emancipation, the, 96. 

Deftand, Madame de, letters of, 268. 

Delaware, State of, concerning the Consti- 
tution, 166. 

Denman, Lord, and Mrs. Barbauld, 272. 

Descartes, the revolutionist philosopher, 
228, 230. 

" Deserted Village," quotation from, 129. 

Dewey, Chester, report of, 324. 

Dickens, Charles, reminiscences of, 253. 

Dickinson, John, American statesman, 
culture of, 235. 

Dix, Dorothea, mentioned, 273. 

Dix, Gen. John A., speech at dinner given 
to, at Paris, 195. 
retirement from official life, 195. 

Dixwell, John, English refugee at New 
Haven, 229. 

Douglas, Stephen A., mentioned, 2, 8, 10, 
quoted, 70. 

Doane, Falls of, at Royalston, 115. 

Drury's Bluff, battle at, 126. 

Dwight, , monument of, mentioned, 

255. 

lliDGEwoRTH, Maria, mentioned, 273. 
Educated man, the relations of the, with 
American nationality, 45. 
the duty of the, 59. 
no bounds to his influence, 64. 
Educational period of America, the, 233. 
Edward III "father of English com- 
merce," 135. 



INDEX. 



355 



Edwards, Jonathan, mentioned, 234, 
Eighteenth amendment to the Constitution 

of Massachusetts, 335. 
Election of Sherifis, etc., concerning the, 

336. 
Electric current, America has established 

the, 52. 
Eleventh amendment of Massachusetts 

Constitution, 337. 
Ellis, Eev. Dr., quoted concerning Gov- 
ernor Lincohi, 180. 
Emancipation of the slaves, concerning the, 

94, 95. 
Emerson, George B., report of, 324. 
Emigration, European, to this land, 231. 
Emmet Guards, the, of Worcester, 206. 
Emmons, Ebenezer, report of, 324. 
Endicott, John, mentioned, 226. 
his coming to America, 2.32. 
Enfranchisement, right of all men to, 

1G8. 
England, cost of her war with Napoleon, 

11. 
her war debt from 1803 to 1815, 11, 13. 
and America, public interest in tlieir 

history, 48. 
the confusion between its past and 

present history, 50. 
extent of her authority, 113. 
English capitalists invest in Massachusetts 

bonds, 21. 
English loan, the, 13. 
English orators, the, 239. 
English traveller, quoted, 148. 
Espinasse, Mdlle. de 1', letters of, 2G8. 
Estabrook, Esquire Joseph, postmaster at 

Royalston, 127. 
Eulogj' on Abraham Lincoln, delivered at 

Worcester, 76. 
Everett, Edward, influence of, 61. 
patriotism of, 07. 
at Gettysburg, 100. 

P AiTH, governs the conduct of States, 
60. 

Falls, of Forbes and Doane at Roj-alston, 
115. 

Faneuil Hall, reception of Twenty-fifth 
Massachusetts Regiment in, 154. 

Father of Waters, Mississippi River, 54. 

Federal authority, acknowledgment of, 
108. 

Federal government, how its re-establish- 
ment will affect the public debt, 16. 



Female education in America, 208. 
Filmer, Sir Robert, English political writer, 

316. 
Finance Committee of Massachusetts, 27. 
Financial condition of Massachusetts con- 
sidered, 20, 27. 
First Congregational Society of Royalston, 

116. 
Fisher & Brooks, mentioned, 251. 
Flag, the, to be upheld and protected, 3. 
presentation of a, to Massachusetts 

Twenty-first Regiment, 40. 
apostrophe to the flag of the Twenty- 
first Massachusetts Regiment, 43. 
Lincoln's determination concerning, 

73. 
American, the blow struck at, 205. 
Flanders, woollen manufactures in, 134. 
Forbes, Falls of, at Roj'alston, 115. 
Fort Sumter, 2. 
Fourteenth amendment to Constitution of 

Massachusetts, 335. 
Fourth of July, oration delivered at Spring- 
field, 1867, 102. 
Fox, Charles James, English orator, 239. 
devotion to liberty, 248. 
mentioned, 289. 
France, the confusion between its past and 
present histor}-, 50. 
concerning her power, 163. 
our indebtedness to, 239. 
in the year 1763, 240. 
France and United States, the friendship 

between, 196. 
Franklin, Benjamin, 49. 

at the Constitutional Convention, 56. 

wisdom of, 235. 

in London, 238. 

at Versailles, 241. 

quoted concerning women in politics, 

281. 
letter to Richard Price, quoted, 338. 
prediction of, 340. 
Frazer, Captain, killed at Chantilly, 42. 
Fredericksburg, mentioned, 40, 43. 
Freeman, Isaac, a purchaser in town of 

Royalston, 113. 
Fremont, John C, mentioned, 3. 
French, Michael, soldier of the Revolution, 

124. 
French war of 1756, effect of, in Massachu- 
setts, 117. 
French, the, coming to America, 53. 
Frj-, John, biographical sketch of, 119. 
selectman at Royalston, 119. 



356 



INDEX. 



Fry, John, concerning the new church at 

Royalston, 121. 
Fry, Elizabeth, mentioned, 273. 

(jADSDEN, Christopher, American patriot, 
mentioned, 237. 

Gage, Thomas, a British general at Salem 
in 1744, 300. 

Gale, Isaac, erected first mill at Royalston, 
119. 

Galileo, pioneer in revolt of science, 228. 

Gambetta, anecdote of, 241. 

Ganges Mountains, American influence ex- 
tends to, 52. 

Garfield, .James A., death of, 344. 

address at memorial observances at 
Worcester, 344. 

General Court, concerning the, in Massa- 
chusetts, 321. 

Genius and art, what America has done 
for, 52. 

Geologist, the, of Massachusetts, 115. 

Gerard, Balthasar, a Catholic fanatic, as- 
sassinator of William the Silent, 346. 

Gerrv, town of, former name of Philipston, 
" 114. 

God, providence of, 5. 

Golfe and Whalle^', regicides, 229. 

Gorham, , American patriot, men- 
tioned, 309. 

Gould, John, English naturalist, report of, 
324. 

Government, the, in peril, 2, 3. 

plan of, for the Constitution, 316. 

Government bonds, concerning investment 
in, 3, 4. 

Governor of Massachusetts, John A. An- 
drew, 8. 

Grant, Ulysses, mentioned, 57, 89. 

Gray, Chief Justice, concerning slavery, 
327. 

Gray, Francis C, concerning the liberties 
of early settlers of Massachusetts, 
299. 

Great Britain, concerning taxation in, 17. 
if the Union were broken, 49. 
the war of 1812 with, 125. 

Greece, the mind of, surviving to the pres- 
ent day, 34. 
no public interest in her history as 
compared with England or America, 
48. 
struggle of her provinces for union, 
53. 



Greeley, Horace, mentioned, 96. 
Gregory, Major-General Franklin, of Roy- 
alston, 127. 
Green, Nahum, his grave at Royalston, 
124. 
Revolutionary soldier, 124. 
served at Bunker Hill, 124. 
delegate to Provincial Congress, 124. 
Greek orator quoted, 65. 
Grenville, Hon. George, English states- 
man, 239. 
Grote, mentioned, 48. 
Grotius, "chief of men," 228. 

Hale, Sir Matthew, mentioned, 226. 
Hale, Nathan, member of Convention of 
1820, 329. 

concerning the record of the Conven- 
tion of 1820, 329. 
Hallam, concerning woollen manufactures, 

134. 
Hamilton, Alexander, 12, 49, 61, 62. 

concerning public credit, 15. 

Treasury papers prepared by, 62. 

portrayed, 62. 

tribute to, 64. 

concerning his education, 101. 

policy of, 125. 

concerning the framing of the Consti- 
tution, 140, 141, 166. 

at the Convention of 1787, 243. 

address at unveiling of statue of, 
287. 

monument of, on Wall Street, New 
York, 287. 

monument of, in Boston, 287. 

sketch of his career, 288, 289. 

grief at death of, 289. 

his part in the Constitution, 293. 

author of The Federalist, 293. 

the father of Nationalism against 
Statism, 295. 

concerning the public treasury, 290. 
Hampden, John, mentioned, 22G, 229. 
Hancock, John, owned land at Royalston, 
115, 119. 

mentioned, 122. 

message of, to Legislature, 323. 

elected governor of Massachusetts, 
325. 
Hancock, Mrs., wife of Governor Han- 
cock, 280. 
Hapgood, Mr., land grant at Royalston, 
113. 



INDEX. 



357 



Harris, Dr. Thaddeus William, entomolo- 
gist, report of, 32-i. 
Harrison, President, mentioned, 289. 
Harvard University, the professorship of 
law at, a gift of Isaac Koj'al, IIG. 
new departments opened, 132. 

Ilawkes, , member of Massachusetts 

Twentv-tirst Regiment, 43. 
Hayne, Robert Y., concerning the school 

of secession, 1G7, 168. 
Herodotus, mentioned, 48. 
Herscliei, Caroline, astronomer, 273. 
Hill, Lieutenant, killed at Chantilly, 

42. 
His Excellency Gov. John A. Andrew, 

251. 
Hitchcock, Dr. Edward, 32. 

third president of Amherst College, 

158. 
a tribute to, 158. 

work of, on geological survey, 324. 
Hoar, Samuel, member of Convention of 
1820, 329. 
concerning taxation, 340. 
Holbrook, Lieutenant, death of, at An- 

tietnm, 41. 
Holland, how she paid her debt, 27. 
Holt, Sir John, English judge, 8. 
Hooker, Rev. Thomas, settled in Connecti- 
cut, 22G. 
Hooper, , donation to Harvard Uni- 
versity, 132. 
Hortensius, mentioned, 35. 
Hosmer, Harriet, sculptor, 148. 
House of Representatives, Massachusetts, 

address in the, 9. 
Howard, John, quotation concerning, 257. 
Howe, Dr. Samuel G., address on the 
character of, 248. 
title of philanthropist applied to, 249. 
in the Greek revolution, 249, 250. 
services of, in education of the blind, 

252, 253. 
review of his life, 256, 265. 
mentioned, 323. 

Hubbard, , member of Convention of 

182.1, 329. 
Hubbard, Thomas, a purchaser in town of 

Royalston, 113. 
Huguenots, settling in America, 53. 
Humphrey, Rev. Edward, 158. 
Humphrey, Hon. James, 30. 

death' of, 158. 
Humphre}-, Dr. Hcman, president of Am- 
herst College, 157. | 



Hunt, Mr., land granted to, in Royalston, 

114. 
Huskisson, William, English statesman, 

mentioned, 138. 

Independence Hall, at Baltimore, 77. 

Industrial Science, address before Society 
of, at Worcester, 187. 
school of, dedicated at Worcester, 192. 

Institute of Technology, Boston, 189. 

Intellectual element of our ancestors, 223. 

Intellectual leaders, names of, 226. 

Intellectual leadership in American his- 
tory, address delivered at Provi- 
dence, 222. 

Italy, concerning her provinces, 53. 

Jackson, Andrew, mentioned, 2, 6. 

in President Lincoln's place, 88. 

concerning slavery, 169. 

member of Convention of 1820, 329. 
Jacobs, Nathaniel, Revolutionary soldier, 
124. 

served in Rhode Island, 124. 
Jameson, Mrs. Anna, English writer, 273. 
Jefferson, Thomas, mentioned, 29, 49. 

intellectual influence of, 62. 

concerning nomination of Lincoln, 86. 

concerning State sovereignty, 166. 

chivalry of, 237. 

at Paris, 241. 
Jonson, Ben, mentioned, 229. 

JxEATS, John, English poet, his "Endy- 
mion " reversed and reproduced, 33. 

Kellogg (Mr.), of Pittsliekl, of alumni of 
Amherst College, 157. 

Kelton, Captain, killed at Chantilly, 42. 

Kent, Chancellor, mentioned, 294. 

Ketchum, William, mentioned, 141. 

Knoxville, mentioned, 40, 43. 

L<AP"ATETTE, Marquis de, mentioned, 127, 
241. 
friendship of, for Hamilton, 289. 

Latin quotation, 16. 

Laurens, John, American soldier, men- 
tioned, 289. 

Lawrence, Abbott, incident concerning, 
188. 

Lawrence, Abbott, gift to Scientific School, 
Cambridge, 188. 



358 



INDEX. 



Lawrence, Amos, mentioned, 132. 
Lancaster, town of, 111. 
Lawrence and Tully rivers, 115. 
Leaders, the early, in America, 232-2.3.3. 
Lee, Arthur and Charles, mentioned, 61, 

237. 
Lee, Rev. Joseph, called to settle at Roy- 

alston, 121. 
Legacy of Josiah Quincy to his infant son, 

'50. 
Legislature concerning grant to female 

college, 270. 
Letters of Madame S(5vigne, and others, 

268. 
Lexington on the 19th of April, 1775, 

204. 
Libby, war prisoners at, 126. 
Light Infantry of Worcester, 206. 
Lincoln, Abraham, mentioned, 2. 
the patriotic President, 7. 
proclamation of freedom by, 59. 
nominated to presidency, 70. 
events of his admmistration, 71, 72. 
determination concerning the flag, 73. 
his prosecution of the war, 73. 
the best man for President, 73. 
the power of his proclamations, 73. 
eulogy on, delivered at Woi'cester, 76. 
his funeral pageantry compared with 
that of Jacob, the Hebrew patriarch, 
76, 77. 
the passing of his funeral procession 

through principal cities, 77, 78. 
his qualities of character and service, 

78. 
his youth, 79. 

compared with Napoleon and Wash- 
ington, 79. 
his second inaugural, 79. 
his library, 79, 80. 
his service in the cause of freedom, 83, 

84. 
the supposed vision of his future great- 
ness, 81. 
period of his life from 1837 to 18.58, 

81. 
as a lawyer, 81, 82. 
as a member of Congress, 82. 
speech before convention at Worcester, 

82. 
competitor of Douglas as senator to 

Congress, 83. 
quoted, 83. 

as supercargo on a flatboat, 80. 
nominated for President, 85. 



Lincoln, Abraham, acceptance of his nomi- 
nation for President, 86. 

election as President, 86. 

assuming the reins of government, 
87. 

as director of the army, 89, 90. 

his w^Mr course criticised by the ancient 
countries, 88, 89. 

message concerning entrance into Rich- 
mond, 90. 

his message of July, 1862, 92. 

assumes all responsibility of his mili- 
tary administration, 92, 93. 

concerning the emancipation of the 
slaves, 91, 95. 

how influenced by public opinion, 97, 
98. 

his speech not unworthy of his action, 
99. 

his messages, 100, 101. 

speecli at Gettysburg, 100. 

his self-education, 101. 

letter to Erastus Corning, 101. 

magnanimity of, 102. 

moral and humane qualities of, 102. 

his belief in God, 103. 

instance of his magnanimity to Chase, 
103. 

last consultation with his cabinet, 104. 

his fame outlives him, 105. 

Restoeek and Liberator, 107. 

compared with Washington, 172, 173. 

in the war of the Rebellion, 172, 173. 

Seward, Grant, and Sherman, com- 
pared with, 173. 

mentioned, 309. 

member of Convention of 1780, 327, 
329. 
Lincoln, Gov. Levi, address in memory 
of, at Worcester, 176. 

resolutions on death of, 176. 

founder of Agricultural Society of 
Worcester, 176, 177. 

presiding at the agricultural show, 178, 
179. 

love of nature, 182, 183. 

in his old age, 184, 185. 

death of, 185. 

debate of, concerning election in Massa- 
chusetts, 334. 
Literature, the encouragement of, in the 
Constitution of Massachusetts, 321, 
322. 
Liverpool, city of, 22. 
Locke, John, the philosopher, 227, 316. 



INDEX. 



359 



London, city of, 22. 

Lord, Otis P., of Salem, of alumni of Am- 
herst College, 157. 

Lord and Saviour, our, 4. 

Lost arts, traces of the, 134. 

Lowell, Judge Juhn, eulogy of, on Gov- 
ernor Bowdiiin, 310. 

Lowell, John, American statesman, mem- 
ber of Convention of 1780, 309. 

Lunatic As3lum, the State, 255. 

Lyman, , monument of, 255. 

Lyon, Nathaniel, American general, men- 
tioned, 3. 

Macaulay, Lord, quoted, 13. 

mentioned, 100, 229. 
McClellan, General George B., mentioned, 
3, 102. 
commander of Union army, 90. 
at Malvern Hill, 172. 
McDowell, Gen. Irwin, at Bull Run, 

172. 
Machinery, concerning the use of, in Eng- 
land, 190. 
Macintosh, Sir James, mentioned, 248. 
Madison, James, 6, 49. 

at the Constitutional Convention, 56, 

61. 
concerning State sovereignty, 166, 167. 
concerning the framing of Constitu- 
tion, 166. 
concerning slaverj', 168, 169. 
at the conventidn of Virginia, 243. 

Magi, , member of Massachusetts 

Twent3'-first Regiment, 43. 
Maine, set off as a separate State, 329. 
Manchester, Sheffield, and Liverpool, their 

controlling intiuence, 138. 
Mann, Horace, concerning the State luna- 
tic hospital, 255. 
mentioned, 323. 
Maustield, Lord, mentioned, 2-39. 
Marlborough, Duke of, mentioned, 89. 
JIarvin, A. P., " Worcester in the War " 

written by, 206, note. 
Maryland from its outset, 226. 
Mason, George, framer of Constitution of 
Virginia, 313. 

concerning religion in the Bill of 
Rights, 316. 
Massachusetts and the War Tax, speech on, 
9. 
State valuation returns in 1860, 17. 
her proportion of the war debt, 17. 



Massachusetts, valuation returns as com- 
pared with those of New York, 18. 

her tax during the Revolution, 18, 19. 

her productive forces in 1814, com- 
pared with those of I860, 19,20. 

increase in her valuation returns, 20. 

establishment of statistical returns in, 
20. 

her industries as compared with those 
of Virginia, 22. 

statistics of her industries for 1855, 21, 
22. 

consideration of her war tax, 24, 25. 

condition of her finances considered 
26, 27. 

credit of, how regarded, 27. 

effect of French war of 1756 in, 117. 

Charitable Mechanic Association, ad- 
dress delivered before the, 131. 

concerning the framing of the Consti* 
tution, 140. 

the product of industries in, 191. 

a commission of the early settlers in, 
298. 

under Charles I., 300. 

under Cromwell, 300. 

under George III., 300. 

under the charter government, 300. 

the adoption of the Constitution in, 
304. 

the framing of the Constitution in, 
309. 

action of, during Shay's Rebellion, 
327. 
Mather, Cotton, mentioned, 234. 
Mayhew, Jonathan, mentioned, 235. 
Meade, Richard Kidder, Revolutionary sol- 
dier, mentioned, 289. 
Mechanic Arts with Liberty and Social 
Progress, relations of, considered, 
132.' 

during the Middle Ages, 133. 

the victories of, over feudalism in 
Great Britam, 137. 

growth of, in New England, 138. 

the progress of, in New England, led 
to the struggle for liberty, 139. 

the sentiment and poetry of, 147, 148. 

progress in, 131. 
Mechanical utility, want of, during feudal 

period, 142. 
Mechanical wonders of Nineveh, Babylon, 

&c., 1.34. 
Mechanics and Commerce, spread of, 
through England and Europe, 135. 



360 



INDEX. 



Mechanics' Hall, "Worcester, 1. 

Mechanics of Massachusetts in the war of 
the Rebellion, 149. 

Medford, the estate of the Hon. Isaac 
Roj-al at, 116. 

Meeting of alumni at Amherst College, 
address at, 156. 

Meeting-house at Royalston, history of, 
120. 

Mexico, pitiable condition of, 163. 

Middle Ages, progress of mechanic arts 
during the, 133. 

Military power in Europe, 229. 

Miller's River, mentioned, 115. 

Millses, the, Bateses, the, and Aliens, the, 
mentioned, 177. 

Milton, blindness of, 253. 
mentioned, 29, 35. 
quoted, 155, 225. 

Mississippi River, 3, 46. 

the inland Nile of America, 52. 

Monadnockand Wachusett mountains, 183. 

Money, an urgent appeal for, for war pur- 
poses, 4. 

Monroe, James, concerning slavery, 169. 

Monument at Worcester for fallen soldiers, 
an appeal for, 152. 
■what it should be, 155. 

Monument of Alexander Hamilton, 287. 

Monumental City, the, receives the body 
of Abraham Lincoln, 77. 

Monuments, the building of, an ancient 
custom, 151. 

Moore, Benoni, land granted to, in Royals- 
ton, 114. 

Moore, Zephaniah Swift, first president of 
Amherst College, 157. 

More, Hannah, 273. 

Morris, Robert, statesman and financier, 
mentioned, 290, 292. 

Motley, John Lothrop, quoted, 105. 

Mount flolyoke, 31. 

Mount Holyoke Seminary, address deliv- 
ered "at, 258. 

Mount Tom and Sugar Loaf, 31. 

Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cam- 
bridge, 188. 

Napoleox Bonaparte, 11. 

the genius of, 79. 

military power of, 229. 
Nation, a, what it comprehends, 46. 

value of a, without a common chord, 
46. 



Nation, continental geography its hand- 
maid, 46. 
without Government, 47. 
organism of a, what it means, 47. 
the fall of a, 47. 

its life the treasury of histories, 47. 
its fate when it loses historical con- 
nections, 48. 
National crisis, concerning the, Oct. 14, 

1861, 1. 
National debt incurred by the war, 12. 

concerning the payment of, 16. 
National independency, the dawn of, 237. 
National unitv, the duty of maintaining, 

58. 
Nationality, comprehends country and na- 
tional life, 46. 
a, extinguished, 48. 
Natural History, Massachusetts interest in, 
324. 
Society of, endowment of, 324. 
Necker, Jacques, a Swiss financier, 62. 
Newbern mentioned, 40, 43. 

death of Adjutant Stearns at, 41. 
battle at, 126. 
New Orleans, city of, 8, 22. 
New York, valuation returns compared 
with Massachusetts, 18. 
funeral honors paid to Abraham Lin- 
coln, 78. 
concerning the framing of the Consti- 
tution, 140. 
Nichols, Isaac, Revolutionary soldier, 124. 
Nightingale, Florence, 284, 
Nineteenth amendment to Massachusetts 
Constitution, concerning election of 
sheriffs, &c., 336. 
Nine\-eh and Babylon, mechanical wonders 

of, 134. 
Ninth amendment to Massachusetts Con- 
stitution, 340. 
Noche triste (the sorrowful night), 106. 
North, Lord, English Tory statesman, 239. 
North Carolina, 3. 

Nullus liber homo, quoted by Chatham, 
312. 

OcTAVius, compromise of, with Antony 
and Lepidus, 57. 

One Country, One Constitution, One Des- 
tiny, 6. 

O'Neil, Captain, of Twenty-fifth Massachu- 
setts Regiment, death of, 154. 

Orange, town of, incorporation of, 114. 



INDEX. 



361 



Otis, James, a purchaser in town of Rov- 
alston, 113, 114, 115, 119. 

mentioned, 119, 122. 
Otis, Samuel, eloquence of, 235. 

mentioned, 292. 

ir AiNE, Robert Treat, mentioned, 309. 
member of Convention of 1780, 327. 

Paley, Dr., quotation from his "Political 
Philosopher, " 338. 

Palfrey, Dr. J. G., quoted, 341. 

Panama, the golden gate of. 52. 

"Paradise Lost," the author of, journey 
into Europe, 228. 

Parker, Chief Justice, Isaac, president of 
Convention of 1820, 329. 

Parker, Chief Justice Joel, concerning 
taxation, 330. 

Parker, , soldier of the Rebellion from 

Worcester, 153. 

Parsons, Theophilus, concerning the "Es- 
sex Result," 307. 
mentioned, 309. 
quoted, concerning slavery, 326. 

Patent Office, records of the, 131. 

Patents, number of, obtained in Worces- 
ter, 191. 

Peabodv, W. B. 0., report of, on fishes, 
&c., 324. 

Peace with the Confederacy, concerning, 7. 
sure to come, 28. 
the only terms of, 59. 

Peekskill mentioned, 205. 

Peel, Sir Robert, as a statesman, 94, 

Pellatt, Sarah, mentioned, 273. 

Pepp^rell, Sir William, mentioned, 204. 

Pequoig, former name of Athol, 112. 

Perkins, Rev. , minister at Royalston, 

127. 

Perkins, Thomas Handasyd, concerning 
education of the blind, 252, 255. 

Peyton, , American patriot, mentioned, 

237. 

Phi Beta Kappa Society of Brown Uni- 
versity, address before the, 222. 

Philadelphia, mentioned, 123. 

Philanthrophist, title of, applied to Dr. 
Samuel G. Howe, 248, 249. 

Phillipstown, formerly town of Gerrv, 
114. 

Pickard, Mary, mentioned, 273. 

Pickering, Timothy, mentioned, 177. 292. 

Pickett, Colonel, of Twenty-Ninth Massa- 
chusetts Regiment, addressed, 44. 



Pierpont, , land granted to, at Roj'als- 

ton, 113. 

Pinckney, Cotesworth, mentioned, 22. 

Pitt, William, mentioned, 49, 62, 137, 
289. 
quoted, 212. 

Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham, the elder, 
239. 

Platform of Baltimore and Chicago com- 
pared, 69. 

Plato, mentioned, 35. 

Plunkett, Sergeant, color-bearer of Twenty- 
first Massachusetts Regiment, 43. 

Plutarch, mentioned, 48. 

Poetrv, 5, 29, 31, 36, 42, 149, 183, 186, 278, 
285. 
Milton quoted, 155. 

Portland and San Francisco, 175. 

Powers, Hiram, American sculptor, 148. 

Prescott, William Hickling, contributor to 
"North American Review," 251. 

Prescott, , member of Convention of 

1820, 329. 

President, the, Abraham Lincoln, 7, 57. 

Priest, one of the first settlers in Royals- 
ton, Mass., 113. 
land granted to, at Rovalston, 113. 
his loyalty to soldiers of the French 
wars, 113. 

Priest's River, mentioned, 115. 

Proclamation of freedom by Abraham 
Lincoln, 59. 

Prophecy, lyric, of Bishop Berkeley, 52. 

Public credit, a limit to, 15. 

principle of Hamilton concerning, 15. 
principle of Washington concerning, 

15. 
concerning the establishment of, 15. 

Puritans, their settlement in America, 53. 

(otuiNCY, Josiah, his legacy to his infant 

son, 50. 
Quincy, Josiah, Jr., genius of, 235. 

member of Convention of 1820, 329. 

IvALEiGii. Sir Walter, memory of, in Vir- 
ginia, 227. 
mentioned, 230. 
Randolph, Pej'ton, mentioned, 237. 

Ravaillac, , murderer of Henrv IV., 

346. 
Real and personal property, value of, in 
1860, 16. 



362 



INDEX. 



Rebellion, object of the, 6. 
the movers of the, 6. 
war of the, conduct of town of Roy- 
alston in, 125, 126. 

Relations of the Educated man with Ameri- 
can Nationality, address on, 45. 

Religious purposes, concerning taxation 
for, 339. 

Remarks at the reception of Twentj'-tirst 
Massachusetts Regiment at Worces- 
ter, Feb. 3, 1864, 40. 

Reno, Major-General Jesse L., 43. 

Republican Convention at Baltimore, 67. 
votes of the delegation of Maryland 
at, 68. 

Republican State Convention at Worcester, 
speech before, 66. 

Resolutions on death of Levi Lincoln, of 
Worcester, 176. 

Revere, Paul, early president of Massachu- 
setts Mechanics' Association, 139. 
concerning the framing of the Consti- 
tution, 140. 

Revisal of the Constitution, concerning 
the, 340. 

Revolution, the, 6. 

from what it grew, 139. 
war of the, 163. 

Revolutionary period, the, of America, 53. 

Rhode Island, concerning the framing of 
the Constitution, 140. 
under its charter government, 308. 

Rice, Lieutenant-Colonel, killed at Chan- 
tilly, 42. 
tribute to the memorj' of, 42. 

Richardson, Eliphalet, Revolutionary sol- 
dier, 124. 

Richardson, Timothy, chosen selectman at 
Royalston, 119. 
concerning the new church at Royals- 
ton, 121. 

Richmond, counsels at, concerning presi- 
dential candidate, 66. 
concerning McClellan's entrance into, 
90. 

Roanoke, mentioned, 40, 43. 
battle at, 126. 

Rogers, Jolin, sculptor of soldiers' monu- 
ment at Worcester, 213. 

Roland, Madame, dving invocation of, 
285. 

Romilly, Sir Samuel, English refoiTner, 
mentioned, 248. 

Rosecrans, General William Stark, men- 
tioned, 3. 



"Royal Chase," first boy born in Royals- 
ton, 116. 
Royal, Isaac, a purchaser in town of Roy- 
alston, 113, 114, 115. 

founded the professorship of law at 
Harvard University', 116. 

concerning his estate at Medford, 116. 

biographical sketch of, 116. 

gave £25 toward meeting-house at 
Ro3-alston, 116, 120. 

concerning the Revolution, 122. 
Royal-shii-e, former name of Royalston. 

112 115. 
Royalston, town of, address at the Hun- 
dredth Anniversary of, 108. 

nothing eventful in its history, 109. 

the founders of, 110. 

paucity of its annals, 109. 

the junior town of Worcester Countv, 
111. 

concerning its territory, 112. 

the brief interim between settlement 
and municipalit}', 112. 

first purchasers of the town, 113. 

land granted in, to Hunt, 114. 

land granted in, to Benoni Moore. 
114. 

its soil, natural beauties, &c., 115. 

proprietors' meetings held at, 115. 

land owned bv John Hancock, in, 
115. 

named for Hon. Isaac Royal, 116. 

concerning the settlement at, 117, 118, 
119. 

incorporation of the town, 118. 

building of the meeting-house, 118. 
120. " 

selectmen chosen at, 119. 

taxing the lands of non-residents, 
119. 

Rev. Joseph Lee settled as minister at, 
121. 

patriotic history of, 122, 127. 

response to military calls, 123. 

Revolutionary soldiers of, 124. 

conduct ofjduring war of the Rebellion, 
125, 120. 

prominent men of, 127, 

its population, 128. 

industries of, 128. 
" Royalston Leg," part of town of Wir.- 
chendon, 112. 

set off to Winchendon, 112, 114. 
Rutledge, John, American orator, men- 
tioned, 237. 



INDEX. 



363 



St. Lawrence Kiver, 48. 

Salisbury, Stephen, of Worcester, men- 
tioned, 187. 

Saltonstall, Gurdon, in America, 232. 

Saltonstall, Leverett, member of Conven- 
tion of 1820, 329. 

Sanborn, Frank, mentioned, 253. 

Saratoga, mentioned, 123. 
the battle of, 163. 

Sargeant, Associate Justice, member of 
Convention of 1780, 327. 

Savage, John, member of Convention of 
' 1820, 329. 

Scientific School, Cambridge, 188, 189. 

Scott, Walter, mentioned, 234. 

Sears, Rev. Dr. Barnas, mentioned, 
323. 

Searses, Harvard College endowed by the, 
32. 

Secession of Southern States, 86. 

Sedgwick, Catharine Maria, mentioned, 
273. 

Sedgwick, Theodore, American jurist, 
mentioned, 289. 

Sevign^, Madame de, letters of, 267. 

Sewall, Associate Justice, member of Con- 
vention of 1780, 327. 

Shaftesbury, Earl of, mentioned, 227. 

Shakespeare, William, 35. 
at the tomb of, 237. 

Shaw, , member of Convention of 1820, 

329. 

Shaw, Chief Justice Lemuel, concerning 
slavery, 326. 

Shay's Rebellion, the, in 1786, .327. 

Sheridan, General Philip Henry, 89. 

Sherman, General William T.,57, 89. 

Sherman, Rogpr, mentioned, 289. 

Shirley, William, Governor of Massachu- 
setts in 1745, 120. 

Sibley, Captain, one of first settlers of 
' Royalston, 110. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, English author, 316. 

Slaver}', the national struggle concerning, 
57. 
George Canning, concerning abolition 

of, 104. 
in America, 166. 
its existence in United States, 169, 

170, 171. 
abolished in Massachusetts, 326, -327. 

Smith, John, varied fortunes of, 2.30. 

Soldiers' monument, speech at dedication 
of, at Worcester, 202. 



f 



Somers, Barrister, concerning speech of, 

100. 
South Mountain, mentioned, 40. 
Sovereignty of the nation over the sover- 
eigntj^ of the States, 164. 
of State's, &c., 216. 
Sparta and Athens, the history of, become 

fabulous, 48. 

Speech at a war meeting, Oct. 14, 1861, 1. 

at Worcester, concerning a memorial 

to fallen soldiers of the Rebellion, 

151. 

at dinner given to General Dix at 

Paris, 195. 
at dedication of soldiers' monument at 
Worcester, 202. 
Sprague, William, Governor of Rhode 

Island, 4. 

Springfield, sketch of early history, 162. 
oration delivered at, July 4, 18G7, 162. 
and Omaha, 175. 
Stanton, Edwin M., mentioned, 102. 
State, the, older than the nation, 59. 
State governments, concerning, 317, 318, 

316. 
Statism the bane of nationalitj', 56. 
Statistical returns, establishment of, in 
Massachusetts, 20. 
of industries of Massachusetts for 1855, 
21, 22. 
Steams, Adjutant, death of, at Newbem, 
41. 
tribute to the memory of, 42. 
Stearns, Rev. Dr., President of Amherst 

College, 159. 
Stephenson, George, inventor and engi- 
neer, 137. 
Stevens, Thaddeus, Chairman of Ways 

and Means, 11. 
Stockwell, Joel, Revolutionary soldier, 124. 
Storer, Dr., report of, on fishes, &c., 324. 
Story, Joseph, member of Convention of 

1820, .329. 
Storj% William Wetmore, sculiitor, 148. 
Strong, Governor Caleb, policy of, 125. 
mentioned, 177, 309. 
member of Convention of 1780, .327. 
Suffrage in the South, concerning, 96. 

concerning the right of, in Massachu- 
setts, 331. 
Sullivan, Associate Justice, James, mem- 
ber of Convention of 1780, 327. 
mentioned, .309. 
Sultan of Turkey, what America has done 
I for,52. ■ . 1 P^ 



364 



INDEX. 



Sumner, Charles, incident of, 241. 
Sumuer, Associate Justice, member of 

Convention of 1780, 327. 
Sutton, town of, 119. 
Sweetzer, Dr., of Worcester, mentioned, 

188. 

1 ANEY, Chief Justice Eoger B., death 

of, 103. 
Tappan, Rev. Dr. David, 32. 
Taxation in Great Britain, 17. 

upon what revenues it depends, 17. 
for school purposes, in Massachusetts, 

336. 
for religious purposes, concerning, 339. 
Templeton, town of, incorporation of. 111. 
Tennessee, State of, 2. 
The Federalist, Written by Alexander 

Hamilton, 293. 
Tilghman, William, American jurist, men- 
tioned, 289. 
Townshend, Charles, member of House of 

Commons, mentioned, 239. 
Tremont Temple, address delivered at, 13f . 
Tully, mentioned, 35. 

Twenty-first Massachusetts Regiment, re- 
ceived its colors, 40. 
its war history, 40, 41, 42. 
reception at Worcester, Feb. 3, 1864,40. 
number of deaths in the, 41. 
apostrophe to the flag of the, 43. 
Twenty-fifth Regiment of Massachusetts 

received in Faneuil Hall, 154. 
Tyler, John, Daniel Webster quoted con- 
cerning, 74. 

Union Jack, 67. 

Union of Great Britain, if broken, 49. 
Union of United State*, if broken, 49. 
Union Pacific Railroad, opening of, 199. 
Union, patriotic appeal for preservation of 

the, 8. 
Union, the, to be preserved, 2. 

must be preserved, 4, 6. 

of the provinces of America, 53. 
United States, the republic of, 6. 

revenues of, 14. 
Unity, the, of American nationality, 50. 

Upton, , commanded Massachusetts 

regiment, 4. 

Vail, Rev. Dr., trusiee of Amherst Col- 
lege, 160. 



Valley Forge, mentioned, 205. 
Vane, Sir Henry, 232. 
Verplanck's Point, mentioned, 205. 
Veto power, concerning tlie, in the Consti- 
tution of Massachusetts, 319. 
Virginia, 3. 

her industries compared with those of 
Massachusetts, 22. 

speculation started in, 53. 

resolutions of, 98, 166. 

the early peopling of, 225. 

Walker, Rev. Dr. James, president 

Harvard College, 82. 
Walker, Moses, Revolutionarj' soldier, 124. 
War, mouej' must be raised for prosecu- 
tion of the, 4. 
a vigorous prosecution of the, pro- 
posed, 2, 5. 
the grumblers against the, 7. 
scene of, confined to the South, 10. 
the extravagance of, 10. 
cost of the, up to July, 1863, 11, 
of 1756, Worcester men in the, 204. 
War debt, concerning tlie, 9, 14. 

concerning the payment of, 16. 
upon what revenues its payment de- 
pends, 17. 
Massachusetts proportion of the, 17. 
what Massachusettj paid during the 
Revolution, 18, 19. 
War history of Worcester, 203-208. 
War meetintr. speech at a, at Worcester, 1. 

held in Worcester, 1861, 202. 
War tax, Massachusetts and the, speech on, 
9. 
of ISIassachusetts, consideration of, 24, 

25. 
Ward, Nathaniel, minister at Ipswich, 

299. 
mentioned, 315. 
Warner, Oliver, Secretary' of State of 

Massachusetts, 118. 
Warren, Joseph, genius of, 235. 
Washburn, Mr., of Worcester, mentioned, 

187. 
Washburn, Elihu B.. minister to France, 

200. 
Washington. George, 6. 

concerning public credit, 15. 
incident concerning. 21, 29, 86. 
at Constitutional Convention at Phila- 
delphia, 48. 
at the Constitutional Convention, 56. 



INDEX. 



365 



Washington, George, quoted, 59. 

began tlie work which Liucohi finished, 

107. 
mentioned, 1G6. 
concerning slavery, 169. 
and Lincohi compared, 79, 172, 173. 
in the American Kevolution, 172, 173. 
Greene, Hamilton, and Lafayette com- 
pared with, 173. 
Father of his Country, 238. 
friendship of, fur Hamilton, 289. 
Watt, James, Scotch inventor, 19, 193. 

mentioned, 137. 
Watts, Samuel, one of the purchasers of 

the town of Ro}''alston, 113, 114. 
Ways and Means, Mr. Stevens Chairman 

of, 11. 
Webster, Daniel, anecdote of, in London, 
20. 
the scholar of the North, 63. 
tribute to, 04. 

quoted in regard to President Tyler, 74. 
concerning nomination of Lincoln, 86. 
in President Lincoln's place, 88. 
mentioned, 127. 
reply to Hayne, 166. 
quoted, 18Q. 
an incident of, 180. 
defender of the Constitution, 245. 
member of Convention of 1780, 329, 

330. 
debate concerning election in Massa- 
chusetts, 334. 
concerning the revisal of the Constitu- 
tion, 340. 
Weitzel, Godfrey, American major-general, 

mentioned, 104. 
Wellington, Duke of, his rise to fame, 89. 

mentioned, 137, 138. 
Wentworth, Thomas, Earl of Strafford, 228. 
Whitney, Eli, inventor of the cotton-gin, 19. 
Whittemore, John, Revolutionarj' soldier, 

124. 
Wilberforce, William, quoted, 59. 

concerning neijcro emancipation, 248. 
Wilde, Richard Henry, member of Con- 
vention of 1820," 329. 
William of Orange, quotation of Mr. Mot- 
ley conceruinff, 105. 
William the Silent, assassination of, 346. 
Williams, John, the charter which he dic- 
tated, 230. 
Williams, Roger, removal from Massachu- 
setts, 230. 



Williams, Roger, his coming to America, 
232. 
concerning religious freedom, 340. 
Willistons, the, endowments of, to Har- 
vard College, 32. 
Wilson, Henrv, concerning taxation, 336. 
Winchendon, town of, 112. 
Winthrop, John, 220. 
in America, 232. 

coming of, to Massachusetts, 298. 
Winthrop, Robert C, at Whig Convention 
at Worcester, 82. 
quoted, 309. 

Witgift, , mentioned, 226. 

" With malice toward none," 105. 
Witherspoon, John, signer of the Declara- 
tion, 61. 
Wolfe, James, English officer, victories of, 

for Britain, 240. 
Woman, emancipation of, 260. 
occupation of, 261. 
change in her social condition, 262. 
relation to marriage, 264. 
what Christianitv has done for her, 

266. 
considered historically, 275. 
intellect of, compared with man, 276. 
in conduct of public affairs, 278-281. 
Franklin quoted concerning, 281. 
heroism of, 284. 
Woman's mission, concerning, 259. 
Woman's sphere, what is it V 282, 283. 
Women as teachers, 271. 
Woodbury, Benjamin, selectman at Roy- 
alston, 119. 
concerning the new church at Royals- 
ton, 12L 
Revolutionary soldier, 124. 
Wool, John E., American general, men- 
tioned, 3. 
Woollen manufactures in Flanders, 134. 
Worcester County Regiment, speech con- 
cerning the, 1. 
Worcester, raising regiments in, 2. 

speech before Republican Convention 

at, 66. 

Whig State Convention at, in 1848, 82. 

meeting at, concerning a memorial to 

fallen soldiers of the Rebellion, 151 

address at, in memory of late Levi 

Lincoln, 176. 
concerning patent inventions, 191. 
first general war meeting held in, 202. 
the 15th of April, 1861, at, 206. 



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